When robots are stars, who needs humans?

Director Michael Bay knows that there’s a devoted and lucrative audience for his brand of sci-fi action films.

His confidence is justified by the response to his unapo-logetic, 189-minute extension of the “Transformers” franchise — it brought in more than $116 millionover the four-day July 4th weekend.

Bay claims he makes movies for teenage boys. Sounds sincere enough, but ticket sales reflect that it’s likely a larger demographic, primarily adult men, that accounts for the continuing interest in this material.

Certainly the audience for “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” includes children, but it’s made for those viewers who nostalgically embrace those 1980s-’90s halcyon days spent with the Hasbro toys that this film series has (for lack of a better word) “inspired.”

Snubbing his detractors, Bay uses what he proudly calls his unique “cutting style” to produce scene after scene of CGI special effects mixed in with bits and pieces of film footage. In every film he makes, this results in a blur of stops and starts and black-screen scene exits that seem dated, considering the amount of money and technology at his disposal.

 At least there’s no attempt to place any weight on the vacant characters or flimsy narrative provided by Ehren Kruger’s incompressible script. What exists of a storyline serves only as the occasional and momentary distraction to the real point of the film, which is showcasing the sight of machines blowing things up.

Shia La Beouf returns as Sam, but this time around he has a new girlfriend, played by model Rosie Huntington-Whitley. Despite the fact that he’s now a college graduate who has saved the world twice, Sam finds himself unemployed and shut off from his contact with the Autobots and his beloved Bumblebee.

It’s not long before an intergalactic war between the earth-dwelling Autobots (good-guy robots) and the Decepticons (bad robots) begins to brew after a handful of government officials reveal that the 1969 moon mission was actually a covert exercise in retrieving the head of an Autobot named Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy), who crashed there in a failed attempt to save his planet.

Employing Optimus Prime and his fellow bots to make a new trip to the moon unearths the rest of Sentinel along with an unexpected weapon.

Stumbling onto some crucial information, Sam crashes the compound that houses the government crew in charge of the Autobots and is reunited with Bumblebee. Soon he finds himself and his associates dodging the handiwork of a serpent-like adversary named Shockwave, who destroys Chicago to obtain Sentinel’s hidden weapon — the component the Decepticons need to insure world domination.

Brief and inconsequential performances from Oscar winner Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey and returning cast member Josh Duhamel prove only to accentuate the unnecessary inclusion of humans in a film like this.

Shown in 3-D where available (at a higher ticket price), the film is poised to be the biggest money-making hit of the summer.

 

‘Bad Movie’: Raunchy film wastes Diaz, rest of cast

Showcasing the over-the-top comedic talents of Cameron Diaz isn’t a bad idea. She often adds fearless humor and genuine charm to roles that her contemporaries simply wouldn’t be brave enough to accept.

However, placing her in the center of a poorly constructed script (by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg) doesn’t help director Jake Kasdan do justice to Diaz or her fellow cast members, including Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel and Lucy Punch.

Various factors make “Bad Teacher” a bad movie, but the most glaring is the main character, Elizabeth (Diaz), an irresponsible, boozing sycophant who would never be capable of being a teacher.

It’s a momentarily amusing concept that quickly looses that gut-busting steam that one looks for in a comedy, when it becomes clear that Elizabeth has neither the intellectual nor emotional depth to do anything in any job. Her behavior makes her as unlikeable as she is unemployable, and it’s a joke that can’t carry an entire film.

 Elizabeth’s singular goal in life is to snag a wealthy husband and then proceed to spend his money. After being kicked to the curb by a rich guy she doesn’t love, Elizabeth finds herself resentfully resuming her “job” as a middle-school teacher.

Determined to raise enough money to have breast augmentation so she can land a new sugar-daddy, the disgruntled teacher begins to think of devious ways to procure fast cash, including helping herself to proceeds from her students’ fundraising car wash.

Catching on to Elizabeth’s inappropriate scheme is a tightly wound fellow teacher, Amy Squirrel (Punch), who manages to incite instant antagonism and rivalry between the two, especially when substitute teacher Scott (Timberlake) reveals he’s single and the recipient of long-standing family wealth.

Also in the mix is the

affable gym teacher Russell (Segel), who suggests to

Elizabeth that they might date but is succinctly brushed off, yet continues to be intrigued by her.

Consumed with landing a man of means, Elizabeth uses her whole bag of dirty tricks as she and Amy vie for Scott’s attentions.

 After weeks of sleeping at her desk and drinking on the job, Elizabeth finds out that a large cash bonus will be awarded to the teacher who brings in the highest state test scores, so she begins a relentless schedule of bizarre punishments for every wrong answer she receives from her clueless students. Eventually, the idea of actually trying to “teach” is thrown out the window and Elizabeth opts for the easier method of stealing a copy of the exam and (unbeknownst to her students) arranging for them to cheat.

“Bad Teacher” is a raunchy, adult-themed film that despite some misleading previews deserves its R rating. Is it a bad movie? Well, of course it is. Will that stop fans of Diaz and ill-informed parents from flocking (with their children in tow) expecting a riotous summer comedy? Well, apparently not.

Moviegoers rewarded this lesson in behaving badly with an opening weekend total of $31 million, which seems like an awful lot of money until compared to the $68 million that “Cars 2” brought to the box office.

After super beginning, film loses momentum

Some of the character development in the sci-fi thriller “Super 8” is remarkably well done by director and writer J.J. Abrams, who is known for his work in television (“Lost” and “Fringe”) as well as the successful homage he delivered with the latest “Star Trek” film.

Co-produced by Steven Spielberg, the film starts out as a genuinely crafted tribute to the creativity generated by a group of film-making kids in the late 1970s and then morphs into a less interesting story-line. And the last act doesn’t live up to the promise suggested at the starting gate.

The problems are rooted in Abrams’ convoluted script, which seems to change focus abruptly midway and rapidly lose credibility and logic — which is a deadly mistake for a genre in which anything is possible as long the “logic” within the confines of the proposed fantasy is upheld.

The plot begins with a middle school student, Joe (Joel Courtney), who is still reeling from the accidental death of his mother and unable to do much but battle with his dad Jackson (Kyle Chandler) about plans for the summer.

Joe’s father, an emotionally distant sheriff’s deputy, believes that sending his son to camp might be best for both of them. Joe of course has different plans.

Racing around their small Ohio town on bicycles, Joe and his tight group of friends have already pledged to spend their summer finishing their zombie-inspired entry for a short-film contest.

With various degrees of talent at his disposal, the young director Charles (Riley Griffiths) assembles a crew that includes a couple of actors, a make-up and special effects artist, and a pyrotechnic expert.

Recruiting a beautiful schoolmate, Alice (Elle Fanning), who sans a license has access to a car, the clan sets out one summer night to film a major scene at a deserted train station outside of town. As luck would have it, the whistle of a train blows in the distance and Charles frantically begins filming the freshly rehearsed scene in order to take full advantage of the moment.

With the camera rolling and the train whizzing past them, Joe turns and sees a truck on the tracks and suddenly the kids are witnesses to a massive derailment. Within minutes, a military crew from the U.S. Air Force arrives just as the kids are able to grab their gear and camera and escape into the night.

Soon after, strange occurrences begin to trouble the townspeople and Joe’s dad steps in for the newly missing sheriff. At the site of the military’s surreptitious “clean-up” operation, Jackson’s questions are repeatedly evaded as he tries to maintain calm in a town where people, dogs, microwaves and car engines have started to disappear.

After viewing the developed footage from Charles’ camera, the kids realize that a mysterious “monster” escaped from the train — so they use their own detective skills to outwit the adults and save their town.

Despite the gaping holes in the story line, the film benefits from compelling visuals, authentically rendered set design and the exuberant performances of the young cast members, who evoke an air of genuine innocence associated with the time period.

These impressive elements along with the PG-13 rating will likely add up to a large viewing demographic that will help make “Super 8” a front-runner during the summer box office season.

Talented cast breathes new life into ‘X’ series

With his offering “X-Men: First Class” director Matthew Vaughn (“Kickass”) finds a comfort zone in the sleek and entertaining prequel to the ongoing Marvel comics franchise.

Inspired by Stan Lee’s characters and constructed by a team of writers, the coming-of-age story outlines the origins of superheroes played in previous installments by older contributors including Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.

This time around an energetic and talented cast breathes some new life into the series allowing Vaughn to showcase the consistently nice work of Michael Fassbender, academy award nominee Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy and Rose Byrne.

 With a plethora of datelines and myriad international settings the story begins in a 1944 concentration camp and ping-pongs around a bit before finally settling in the 1960s which ultimately provides for some splashy visual doses of nostalgic camp in both costuming and set design.

Following the angst-ridden escapades of telepathic Charles Xavier/ Professor X (McAvoy) and a clan of mixed-up young adults who happen to be mutants armed with spectacular powers gives the film some fast-paced action scenes while also delivering snippets of background information on the various characters.

Professor X has a vision of creating a school of sorts for fellow mutants in which he helps them channel and control their cool but often dangerous “gifts,” thereby making coexistence with humans possible.

Gathering up his blue shape-shifting adoptive sister Raven/Mystique (Lawrence) along with a motley crew of abnormals with names such as Banchee, Beast and Havok, the optimistic Professor X tries to convince his best pal Eric/Magneto to join him in assisting a pretty CIA agent Moira (Rose Byrne) in her Cold War effort to preserve world peace.

With intense distrust of the government and humans in general, Magneto’s only interest is in avenging the death of his mother at the hands of a maniacal Nazi, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). Attempting to work with Professor X and his team ultimately proves to be too much for the metal-bending Magneto and soon the quibbling mutants discover that along with being at odds with each other they are also at the epicenter of the Cuban missile crisis.

Bacon delivers another unbridled performance as he injects his characterization of an archenemy with an appropriately creepy mix of venom and joie de vivre. Other welcome additions to the cast include Oliver Platt, Zoe Kravitz and January Jones as Emma Frost a mutant who assists Shaw in his glorification of the dark side.

With enough on hand to satisfy Marvel fanboys as well as newbies to the genre, “X-Men: First Class” had no problem beating “Hangover Part Two” and bringing in an opening weekend return of $56 million to the box office, allowing for a jump start to what will likely be an early summer hit.