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In ‘Transformers: Dark if the Moon,’ Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whitely are caught in the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons.

Robots battle for the fate of Earth. With Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Director: Michael Bay. (2:34). PG-13: language, violence. At area theaters

“There are thinkers,” we learn in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” “and there are doers.” By any reasonable standard, Michael Bay has long since proven himself the latter. So if you’re looking for a shock-and-awe experience, the third in history’s most bombastic summer series will do the trick. There’s no arguing you’ll leave feeling like you were assaulted by an army of alien robots yourself.

Anyone hoping to engage even a single brain cell, however, is out of luck. Which is too bad, since popcorn blockbusters don’t actually have to be mind-numbingly stupid or soul-suckingly empty. (See: “Fast Five.”)

But Bay’s found his trillion-dollar formula, and he’s sticking to it. Once again our hero, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), finds himself in the middle of a massive battle between the Autobots (yay) and the Decepticons (boo). Before we can get there, though, we have to sit through endless exposition, in which we learn that Buzz Aldrin brought a secret Transformer weapon back from the moon. The Decepticons plan to use it to colonize our planet and revive theirs; Sam and his new girlfriend (model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) want to help the Autobots stop them.

Or something. Ehren Kruger‘s rambling screenplay seems more intent on punishing than enlightening us. While the first film found some humanity in the connection between Sam and the robots–especially his car, Bumblebee–this one brushes emotion aside like Optimus Prime dismissing rush-hour traffic. All that matters is the long, slow slog to the Chicago-set, theater-rattling finale, which seems to last about four hours.

That’s not a compliment, by the way. There’s so much potential in a Transformer, which can, after all, transform into anything. But Bay misses every opportunity to make something interesting out of his characters; instead, he’s content to spend his enormous budget on grinding destruction so generic and visually convoluted, it’s often hard to tell who we’re supposed to be rooting for. (The 3D glasses add nothing but an extra dimension to your ticket price.)

With the ongoing exception of LaBeouf and John Turturro as a former FBI agent, the actors—including Frances McDormand, Patrick Dempsey, Josh Duhamel, and John Malkovich–seem to be competing for most robotic performance. (Peter Cullen once again voices Optimus, and Leonard Nimoy voices his former mentor, Sentinel Prime.) As for Huntington-Whiteley, she makes an excellent case for the return of Megan Fox in the next installment.

And there will be another, no doubt, as soon as “Dark of the Moon” makes the money Bay anticipates. But surely next time he can find a more realistic motivation for all the carnage: if this movie is an accurate reflection of human culture, it’s hard to believe the Autobots would risk everything to save us.

Magic Moment: In the middle of the big battle, everything stops as a single building folds in half, and Sam gets closer to doom than he ever has before.