Transformers: Age Of Extinction
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer
165 mins; Class 12A; KRS Releasing Ltd

How can such an assault on all our senses, something so ear-splittingly loud and unrelentingly action-packed, be so mind-numbingly boring?

That is the question that came to mind around 40 minutes into Transformers: Age of Extinction. (A second question immediately followed: how can I sit through two more hours of this plodding pandemonium? Answer: have a quick nap.)

I kid you not – despite the non-stop cacophony emanating from the screen, so completely disengaged was I from the events unfolding thereon that there were moments I was actually dozing off. That is how completely tedious this, the fourth instalment of director Michael Bay’s blockbuster franchise based on the popular line of Hasbro toys, is.

The ‘plot’, for what it’s worth, picks up a few years after the events of the last film (I don’t remember details, but I know that Chicago was reduced to rubble). Mark Wahlberg plays Cade Yaeger, a Texas inventor who lives with his 17-year-old daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz). Despite being flat broke, Yaeger buys an ancient truck, hoping to break it down and sell its parts before discovering it is in fact … a Transformer, none other than Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen). Optimus tries to reconnect with his fellow Autobots to fight off the impending threats posed by a shadowy government organisation led by Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) that is building its own machines.

What follows is a by-the-numbers blockbuster clearly created by committee. Explosive confrontations between good and evil robots? Check. Gun-wielding, sun-glasses-wearing, fascist-loving government operatives? Check. Thinly-sketched characters who spend too much time running away on foot or in trucks? Check. Incoherent storyline and trite dialogue? Check. Once metallic, fire-breathing dinosaurs make their appearance, however, the preposterousness factor went through the roof and I was ready to check out.

This film willnot tax audiences’ collective brainsor funny bones,but will certainly tax their pockets

Die-hard fans of the franchise will accuse me of being a boring old biddy who hates this kind of movie. Not true. I’m happy to acknowledge that the first Transformers movie was enjoyable enough. It took a worthy premise that was ripe for adaptation for the big screen, and with the necessary effects technology in place, an explosive, awe-inspiring, funny and innovative movie was born. Fourth time around, however, the novelty has not so much worn off but rusted beyond repair; the lack of ideas evident by the regurgit-ation of what has gone before.

Bay directs with his usual disregard for restraint, thinking that padding the running time with scenes of cars transforming into robots while buildings explode behind them is good enough.

The script, written by Ehren Kruger, contains neither coherent narrative nor character development, and the dialogue is laughable for all the wrong reasons. A seven-year-old, imagination fired by playing with Transformer toys, would have come up with a better script in a heartbeat. Oh, had they let this happen…

The ‘acting’ is for the most part completely wooden. Wahlberg sleepwalks through the role with an unchanging expression of bewilderment throughout. T.J. Miller as his sidekick promises some badly-needed comic relief but is dispensed with 20 minutes in. Newcomer Nicola Peltz is reduced to the dubious honour of being one of Bay’s Babes – a young teenage girl there simply for the male cast (and disturbingly, the robots) to gawk at as she runs around with tight jeans or miniscule shorts shrieking at any sign of danger as she waits to be rescued.

Kelsey Grammer snarls his way through his role as furtive CIA operative. Thank heaven for the microscopic mercies Stanley Tucci offers, as his presence alleviates proceedings somewhat as he delivers his lines as a billionaire scientist with tongue firmly nailed to his cheek.

Bottom line, Age of Extinction feels like nothing more than a money-making exercise, aimed, in fact, at the bottom line. It will not tax audiences’ collective brains or funny bones, but will certainly tax their pockets to the tune of a bazillion dollars as it crushes the competition at the box office … while Bay reportedly prepares the next two instalments in the franchise. If only the ‘extinction’ in the title were prophetic ...