Michael Bay has now done two self-indulgent, effects- crammed movies about toys that toymaker Hasbro is credited with inventing. For those who missed it, Transformers was a popular cartoon that children of the 1980s used to rush home to watch after school.

Bay's sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has Shia LeBeouf's Sam Witwicky and Megan Fox's Mikela Barnes working again with the good- guy Autobots against the dark forces of the Decepticons. It introduces ancient Transformers that were on Earth 17,000 years ago fighting over control of a doomsday machine that will eat the sun. Autobot Optimus Prime's ancestors defeated the Decepticons through self-sacrifice and by hiding their power source.

Revenge runs a staggering two hours and 30 minutes. Bay's robots clank, bang and painfully grind themselves into gigantic, terrifying creatures. Dialogue while these transformations take place is wedged into the annoying, constant whooshing of over-processed studio noise and is indecipherable.

The Transformers transform so quickly and move in such a flurry that it is nearly impossible to digest what's happening. In the nonstop battles you rarely know which Transformer is which. They're just a blur of action accompanied by noise. They kill humans, level buildings, ancient monuments and each other. The automatons rage on for two hours. What passes for a plot is interspersed into the remaining half-hour.

No white elephants in the room. I'll be brutal. Bay's film sucks with a capital "S" and with the word enveloped in bold italics. Slathering fans that pop out of a showing of Bay's Revenge and think it's one of the oh-my-gosh-best-movies-ever worry me.

The TV series was crap on a serious level but the popularity is understandable. All-powerful robots that can disguise themselves as cars and trucks is a cool idea. Many of you still have yours, stuffed away in a drawer somewhere with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- a discussion for another day.

The well-done Transformers from 2007 featured creative robots beating each other into nuts and bolts via a passable plot. Parts of it -- especially John Turturro's straight-faced comedy as the special agent tracking the mechanical beasts -- were really fun. Nothing, not even a reprise by Turturro, in this headache-inducing mess can make that claim.

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