D

The title may be “Transformers,” but “Dark of the Moon,” the third installment of the Michael Bay franchise based on the Hasbro action figures, is just more of the same—except for the subtraction of Megan Fox and the addition of 3D, which hardly seems a fair swap, although to be fair Bay has added a Fox substitute in Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a tall, svelte, blonde British model who’s unaccountably become the new girlfriend of brash but supposedly lovable series hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf).

Witwicky, now an unemployed college grad looking for work, he gets a job (unfortunately sans pay) without even applying for it—once again fighting the evil Decepticons in concert with his old pals, the good Autobots led by Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen). He’s drawn into this latest (and one hopes final) chapter in the endless war between the opposing armies of clunking aliens when the long-unnoticed wreckage of an Autobot ship is discovered on the far side of the moon and investigated by the Apollo 11 mission.

This is the second summer sci-fi behemoth—following the “X-Men: First Class” revisionism on the Cuban Missile Crisis—that rewrite American history to suit its purposes. Here President Kennedy’s call for the manned moon landing is presented merely as a pretext to beat the Russkis to the craft and check it out stealthily. The fifty-year-old find become the basis for contemporary conflict when Optimus Prime learns of the vessel’s presence and rescues his predecessor and mentor Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) from his long dormancy in it. Unfortunately, that acts as the catalyst for the evil Decepticon leader Megatron (Hugo Weaving) to launch his plan to destroy the Autobots and enslave humanity—in which he has a new henchman, the snakelike Shockwave (Frank Welker).

The contortions of Magatron’s scheme are so silly that there’s little point in trying to unravel them. Suffice it to say that, after a stop in Washington to destroy a national moment (a requirement in all pictures like this since “Independence Day”—in this instance it’s the Lincoln Memorial), it al winds up with the Decepticons in control of a devastated Chicago as ground zero of Megatron’s hostile takeover of the planet, and Sam and his comrades-in-arms, both the Autobots and humans Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and ex-Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson), inside the city attempting to derail the plot. It’s personal for Sam, too, since his girlfriend Carly (Huntington-Whiteley) is trapped in a Windy City skyscraper with her slimy boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey).

“Dark of the Moon,” like its predecessors the original “Transformers” (2007) and the sequel “Revenge of the Fallen” (2009), is a special-effects extravaganza, especially in the battle of Chicago that makes up the final forty minutes or so (though even those of us who know the city well will have trouble deciphering the topography of the conflict with any precision). But the constant use of CGI gets decidedly tiresome over the long haul (and this one is way too long, once again droning on for more than two-and-a-half hours). That big concluding battle is pretty much a visual mess (as are, oddly, the sequences juxtaposing real footage and staged scenes involving Presidents Kennedy and Obama). And it’s oddly dull as well, even when people are scrambling down the glass sides of skyscrapers that are tumbling to the ground.

That’s partially because the picture isn’t just poorly written, with streams of cliché that one can only hope are intended as send-ups of wretched dialogue, but also badly shot and edited. Amir Mokri’s camerawork relies far too much on rapid-fire movement and brutal close-ups, and the editing shared by Roger Barton, William Goldenberg and Joel Negron accentuates the jaggedness with its dizzying machine-gun style. Those qualities are part of the CGI sequences, too, which as a result are frequently indecipherable. And all the ‘bots remain dull metal-men—even the little ones that are Sam’s pets, and designed to be naughty gremlins, and the purportedly poignant Bumblebee.

With a few exceptions, the humans are no better. John Malkovich has some over-the-top fun as Sam’s supercilious boss, and John Turturro returns to chew up the scenery again as ex-man-in-black Simmon, as also do Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam’s sitcomish, intensely irritating parents. But though Huntington-Whiteley looks great running around in her designer dresses and ultra-tight jeans, her acting talent seems inferior even to Fox’s, which may explain some of the hyperkinetic editing in her scenes that seems designed to disguise her inadequacies in that department. Duhamel and Gibson strike the usual poses, and Dempsey is conventionally sleazy, while Frances McDormand is wasted as the purse-lipped director of the National Intelligence Agency, so-called. As for Ken Jeong, who’s stuck with the most deplorable material as an engineer named Wang, the less said the better; he’s an even more offensive stereotype than he was in the “Hangover” movies.

The central problem, though, is LaBeouf. In the first episode he was a likable schlub, but over the course of the series his character has developed into a loud, abrasive whiner, and in “Moon” he’s pretty much insufferable. It’s difficult to embrace an action-adventure movie when its hero is a guy it’s hard to root for.

“Dark of the Moon” is, in the end, a bombastic, elephantine bore whose lack of visceral excitement is topped only by its excess of stupidity. Like the later “Star Wars” episodes, though, it will probably be embraced nonetheless by die-hard fans, as well as by lemming-like sequel-goers who will traipse into theatres even for utter drek like the last two “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. But it should really be consigned to the cinematic scrap heap.

Grade: D

The summer’s previous sequels—“Spider-Man 3,” “Shrek the Third,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” “Ocean’s Thirteen”—have all been disappointments, but such isn’t the case with “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” Not because this second installment in the Marvel Comics franchise is good; it’s not. But the first movie in the series was so awful that expectations had to be low for the follow-up. This chintzy-looking effort unfortunately meets them.

The success of the original, a kind of origins episode that explained how the foursome got their special powers in an accident out in space and won their first victory over the dreaded Dr. Doom, could be explained only by the fact that it was so cartoonish that it appealed to small fry. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the makers—most of them holdovers from the first picture—have chosen to follow pretty much the same juvenile formula. That means, unfortunately, that “Silver Surfer” may entrance the five to ten-year old set (boys in particular) and older members of the audience of similar intellectual maturity, but will be met with snorts of derision from most anyone else. The short 90-minute running-time (merciful, given the quality or lack thereof) also seems suited to such a target demographic, as also does the complete lack of anything resembling character development or real human feeling.

The story told here is based on a forty-year old classic from the comic—the one about the FF’s battle against planet-eater Galactus and his herald, the gleaming but tortured Silver Surfer, who’s embraced his awful duty in order to save his own world from extinction. The Surfer became so popular that he starred in two series of his own book, along with multiple guest appearances in other Marvel titles and a host of one-shots, but here what we get is in effect both a sequel and a second origin tale, presumably designed to initiate a theatrical spin-off akin to the one that emerged on the comic pages. And who knows, we’ll probably soon see a “Silver Surfer” movie. After all, a solo Wolverine picture is in the offing.

If that happens, though, one can only hope such a flick will be superior to this one, which sees the wedding between Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), still the bland science nerd, and Sue Storm/Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba), still the vacuous beauty, interrupted by the Surfer’s (Doug Jones, with voice by James Earl…no, Laurence Fishburne) very theatrical entrance to the stratosphere, where he’s been causing massive weather fluctuations, energy blackouts, and damage to a succession of world landmarks. Johnny Storm/Human Torch Chris Evans)—still the money-grubbing womanizer—is sent to intercept him, none too successfully, while earthbound Ben Grimm/The Thing (Michael Chiklis)—still the muscle-bound buffoon—looks on. All of which leads to a struggle between the alien and the whole team, until the Surfer, finally coming to the realization that he can’t keep serving such a master, join with our heroes against Galactus. Making matters more turbulent is the reappearance of the Four’s old nemesis, metal-man Dr. Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), who once against comes across as a leering bargain-basement version Skeletor from the old “He-Man” toon. Here he tries to usurp the Surfer’s powers for his own nefarious purposes. There’s also a typically obtuse army general (Andre Braugher) on hand to give Doom access to the Surfer while condescendingly dismissing the efforts of Richards and his crew.

Just about nothing goes right with “Silver Surfer.” The dialogue provided by Mark Frost and Michael France is puerile, the acting alternately wooden and comically exaggerated, and Tim Story’s direction limp. Even the effects are mediocre, although the Surfer character itself is kind of cool, visually at least, for awhile (certainly better than the Galactus footage, which looks like outtakes from Disney’s 1979 “Black Hole”), and John Ottman’s score is equally tepid.

Compared to the best superhero movies—the ones that treat the genre seriously and try to add some welcome emotional heft to it, like the first two “Spider-Man” pictures, “Superman Returns” and “Batman Begins”—the best that can be said of this flyweight, instantly forgettable effort is that it’s unpretentious. But then it has a great deal to be unpretentious about.