'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'

Just when we've been lulled into thinking a car is just a car and a plane is just a plane, the metal monstrosities of Cybertron are back in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Where once only 14 robots bone-crushed our world and each other, now there are 46 of them on the prowl, morphing out of microwaves, motorcycles, fighter jets and more as they ready for a screeching showdown of titanic proportions in director Michael Bay's latest extravaganza of alloyed excess.

Shia LaBeouf is back as Sam, the precocious teen who gave hope to nerds everywhere in 2007's "Transformers" that they too could get the beautiful girl, if only they had the right alien species parked in their garage. Now he's headed off to college leaving behind said beautiful girl, Mikaela (Megan Fox), who spends her days working on cars and bikes by artfully draping herself across them in Daisy Dukes that make Jessica Simpson seem modest.

Bumblebee, Sam's Autobot guardian angel, a gentle metal giant whose undercover guise is a souped-up yellow Camaro, isn't going to college either, and B is none too happy about it.

Meanwhile, planet Cybertron is in trouble and the bad guy Decepticons are in a foul mood, still holding a grudge since the last movie when the good guy Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, won the day. War, we sense, will come soon. And does it ever, with soul-shaking, knee-quaking megaton force.

Though battles are "Transformers' " raison d'etre, before it's over, "Revenge" will collapse under the weight of far too many of them. With legions of Autobots and Decepticons now in the fray, lost is the simple pleasure, arguably the beauty, of seeing a couple of metal heads shred each other into a million shiny pieces.

In the last film, the Bot-Con battle was over "the cube," a metallic and encryption-based thing (excuse the technical jargon) called the All Spark that held great power and pixilated from big to small in some very cool ways. This time, the thing at the center of the conflict is "the matrix," which could lead you to think some of the hard edges of Cybertron's fighting forces might morph into smooth silvery sinews, but no such luck.

If anything, Bay, never one to bother with nuance, has packed even more wing nuts and wheels, rods and bolts, pressure plates and pilot bearings into these visually complex beings. Despite the millions it must take to construct them (even in CGI), they still have a junkyard, found-object look that has long entranced boys, filling toy boxes and Hasbro's bank accounts for years.