"Transformers: Age of Extinction" review

Due to a lack of films playing near me, I decided to finally watch the latest installment in the "Transformer's" franchise. Going into this film I did not expect to get a very good storyline, or interesting characters, I dared only to hope that this movie would entertain me. After about 30 minutes I realized how miserably "Age of Extinction" is failing to do so.
The fourth "Transformers" are full of the director's cliches: explosions, evil government officials, mean corporations, low angles of people getting out of cars, attractive but incredibly stupid female characters, racial stereotypes and attempted humor... aah, good ol' Michael Bay.
The movie follows Mark Wahlberg and his family as they fight the government alongside Autobots in order to defeat.... the bad guys I guess. This is where the movie really starts to dig a hole for itself. I had no idea who the hell the bad guys were. There was this evil transformer who I think was supposed to be a Deception, there was Stanley Tucci, who played a corporate villain, there was this other dude from the government who wanted everyone to die, then there were these fake Autobots, and there were also the creators of all the Transformers who are also evil, and should die.
After I realized that I have no idea what the hell is going on, I decided to at least enjoy the action scenes. And so I waited for them to happen. And then I waited some more, and then some more, and then it happened. Boring, shaky action that I was not invested in at all, because I had no idea who the characters are, and I did not care for their safety. For some reason the movie is 2 hours, 45 minutes long. Now, I don't mind that, as long as the runtime is justified. Not only does this film not justify its lengthy screen presence, it also failed to justify its existence. I struggle to understand who this film is intended for. Many films can use the excuse that they are made for kids, thus explaining the absence of common sense and intrigue, but I can not imagine a kid sitting through the boring, pointless dialogues, and miserable character development to finally get to the exciting stuff, which is not even that good. I was bored out of my mind through most of this movie. I took two lengthy  bathroom breaks, not because I had to go, but because I had nothing better to do. I talked myself into staying to see what the "Dinobots" are going to look like. They were advertised as a large part of the film and actually looked pretty good in the trailers. After not seeing the dinosaur transformers for about 2 hours, I started suspecting that the trailers were lying to me. When I finally got to see them, I had no doubts that the trailers were lying to me. The damn creatures are in the movie for 5 minutes and serve no purpose whatsoever. More importantly, they aren't even that cool to look at.
Despite seeing the movie very recently, I can hardly remember the characters or the plot. "Age of Extinction" left no aftertaste. For nearly 3 hours I watched as Michael Bay desperately tried to make the movie more memorable with explosions and loud noises. Seriously, EVERYTHING explodes. *MINOR SPOILER* During the climax of the movie, one of the Dinobots crashes through a solid concrete wall. As I was watching it, I said to myself: "There is no way that the wall is going to explode, there is no way that Michael Bay is brave enough, to make a concrete wall explode on impact with a metal creature." I was wrong. The wall exploded as if a couple megatons of nuclear weapons were dropped on it. I do not remember the rest of this movie, due to the facepalm that covered my eyes for the next 15 minutes.
Surprisingly, there are actually a couple things that I liked about the movie. The cinematography was good at times, and Mark Wahlberg was a huge improvement from Shia LaBeouf. Wahlberg's daughter looked nice, and some explosions were pretty cool.
I would sum up "Transformers: Age of Extinction" like this: It is a cake that looks pretty nice on the outside, however, once I took a bite, I realized that the creators of this movie took an extensive dump in the mouth. The worst thing of all, is that movies like this, make more money than the far superior "Pacific Rim". So if you want to see a movie about monsters and robots, do yourself a favor and do not go and see this at the theaters, instead watch Guillermo DelToro's kaiju movie.
I give transformers 3/10, for some decent action, a couple cool moments, Mark Wahlberg's hot daughter, and the courage it took to explode a concrete wall that a dinobot crashes into.