TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION
(M)
★★☆
Michael Bay's toy-based series of overlong, loud, silly movies thunders on with a new human cast here, which some might consider an advantage. Mark Wahlberg plays struggling inventor Wade, who buys an old truck to strip for parts but discovers it is in fact an injured Optimus Prime (leader of the good-guy robots).
The stage is set for yet another battle between good robots and bad robots with some nasty humans, too, including Stanley Tucci as a businessman who wants to build his own Transformers and Kelsey Grammer as a paranoid government agent who's no friend of the robots.
For me the novelty wore off a while ago and the robots all look pretty much the same. But then, I'm not really the target market and you don't go to one of these films expecting Shakespearean character nuances. If you saw the title and thought (hoped?) this marked the end of the series, you probably won't want to bother. But if talk about the Seed and the Creators and other such matters excites you, go right ahead. The special effects are certainly impressive.
One thing that is really annoying is that the DVD has no extras at all. If you want any of the featurettes, you have to get the Blu-ray.
