REVIEW SUMMARY
Boys and their toys are in full formation in “Transformers,” a movie of epically assaultive noise and nonsense. Originating with the shape-shifting toys — created in Japan, rebranded in America — that transform from robots into stuff like cars and planes, then back again, the movie has been designed as the ultimate in shock-and-awe entertainment. The result is part car commercial, part military recruitment ad, a bumper-to-bumper pileup of big cars, big guns and, as befits its recently weaned target demographic, big breasts. It’s kind of nifty when the robots transform the first time; they furiously shake back and forth like wet dogs desperately to dry off. But by the 99th time there’s no fun left at all, even during the rock-’em, sock-’em knockdown that delivers the movie, in Spielbergesque pastiche, first to a violent and then to a warm-and-fuzzy close.

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times