All Rise...

Judge David Johnson's Nissan Maxima transformed into a robot last night and pooped on the front lawn.

The Charge

DRINK BUD LIGHT

Opening Statement

There's a scene about 12 hours into Transformers: Age of Extinction where Bumblebee jumps off a crash-landing two-headed alien robot Pterodactyl and decapitates another robot, while fiery debris rain down in slow motion on top of a perfectly framed Victoria's Secret bus ad. That's everything you need to know about this movie.

Facts of the Case

Following the cataclysmic events of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, when Megatron and his pals put a wallop on the city of Chicago, humans have grown to distrust Transformers. A shadowy CIA offshoot agency has been systematically hunting down remnant Autobots and wiping them out, selling their parts off to a similarly shadowy defense firm. The big question remains: Where is Optimus Prime? Turns out he's been in a Texas barn, the rehab project of an inventor named Cade Yeqger (Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter). But when the bad guys start calling, Cade, his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz, The Last Airbender), and her boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor, Delivery Man) get pulled into yet another interplanetary grudge match, where the collateral damage will be bigger, the fireballs grander, and the migraines most painful.

The Evidence

Transformers: Age of Extinction fails at being a coherent film, in pretty much every single respect…save for "the caterer remembered to keep the bagels warm." The writing is a joke, the characters are as consistent as week-old flan, the product placement embarrassing, and the mythology—which has been tortured beyond recognition over the course of the previous three films—has ceased to make a molecule of sense.

But this is not going to be a negative review. In fact, I'm going to do my best to defend this abomination. Not because I'm a contrarian Internet troll, or that I'm desperate for page clicks (though please share this review with your friends), but because I've come to the conclusion that there is room for this type of bombastic, empty-headed, eye-punching insanity in our cinematic consciousness. The Transformers franchise is successful and I'm sick of this being used as a cudgel to beat on movie-going audiences. Look, if you want to use the ratings of The Big Bang Theory as an indicator that humanity has ceded to its darkest impulses, fine. But I'm perfectly content to allow that Transformers: Age of Extinction has its place.

It all depends on how you approach it. If you walk into this believing "making sense" is on the menu, or maybe this Transformers movie will be the understated character that the other three weren't, then brother you have only yourself to blame for leaving it pissed off. By now, we should know these movies are what they are—monster truck rallies.

They are pyrotechnics and noise, metal and wheels, gasoline and id. There is as much narrative cohesion holding together the spectacle of Optimus Prime riding a fire-breathing metal dinosaur as there is Gravedigger's next run over decommissioned school buses. Judged in that frame of mind, this piping hot mess of a movie delivers what it sets out to. It is pure mayhem, a sensory overload experience that not only embraces its excess, but revels in it like a Great White rolling around in a salon mud bath. If you take this seriously, if you're looking for anything other than robot murder, if you're a sensible moviegoer demanding directors and writers think seriously about their art, Transformers: Age of Extinction will undoubtedly be about as enjoyable as a lap dance from a union pipe-fitter.

Now, if we take a more film-centric critical approach—having already established this is a non-movie—the only positive statement I can conjure is this: The worst parts of Transformers: Age of Extinction are far less worse than the worst parts of the other three movies. Oh sure, this is jam-packed with dumb—Stanley Tucci's character mysteriously transitions from calculating antagonist to bumbling comic relief in the space of hours; Kelsey Grammar's CIA Black Ops director is a cartoon villain; the boyfriend's accent shifts from Irish to American, presumably on his mood)—but I can honestly say there is nothing as insipid as Constructicon testicles, any scene with Sam Witwicky's parents, or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley saving the entire world by calling Megatron "a bitch." So there's that.

Paramount's Transformers: Age of Extinction (Blu-ray) pounds as you'd expect. The 2.40:1/1080p HD transfer is fantastic, serving up over-the-top-visuals with clarity and color. The action is as busy as ever, but light years easier to track over the original film's jumbled mess, and the visual fidelity ensures you'll consume all the craziness. Audio is a monster, leveraging Dolby's new Atmos technology. Not equipped? No worries. Your home theater will still output it on discrete channels. Whatever wizardry they're using for the mix is an absolute homerun, offering one of the most aggressive, enveloping audio tracks I've ever heard.

Bonus features include an interview with Michael Bay, a sprawling eight part making-of documentary, some light on-set footage with the cast, a segment shot in the Hasbro factory, and iTunes digital copy, an UltraViolet download, and a standard def DVD.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

In the interview, Michael Bay talks about some genuinely amazing stunts, but the visual effects overloads blurs the line between practical and CGI. A bummer for the stunt guy who actually gets hit in the face with a real car…but that's the cost of Bayhem.

Closing Statement

Transformers: Age of Extinction is an incoherent assault on the senses, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for it.

The Verdict

Guilty of explosions and not much else.

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