The Transformers, those robots disguised as jets and sports cars, arrive in theaters battling one of the most malevolent forces in the galaxy: Michael Bay.

Whatever chance that "Transformers," which is based on the toys that debuted in the 1980s along with a cartoon and a comic book, might have been a decent movie disappeared the moment Bay was hired to direct.

For all its other deficiencies, "Transformers" fails because it is a Michael Bay film, terrible for the same reasons all this egomaniacal hack's films are terrible. Bay has no discipline, no style, no concern for story, no sense of rhythm. He just piles on and plows ahead: big, dumb and loud. Doesn't matter if his star is Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck or a giant robot that turns into a truck, Bay renders them all irrelevant with his sun-baked cinematography and ever-swaying camera.

The most startling thing about this hire is that executive producer Steven Spielberg put Bay in the director's chair. Back in the '80s - at the same time the Transformers were invading pop culture - Spielberg would collaborate with Joe Dante, Richard Donner and Robert Zemeckis. Now he collaborates with a Jerry Bruckheimer castoff? The collapse of DreamWorks must have addled his mind.

Bay's leaden touch with "Transformers" is most conspicuous in a portentous military subplot that stretches the film to its absurd running time of two hours and 24 minutes. Bay recycles scenes from "Armageddon" of defense officials with red lights on their faces trying to figure out how to prevent the end of the world. The crisis begins when a mysterious robot destroys a U.S. base in Qatar.

Meanwhile, in sunny California, screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman recycle "Herbie: Fully Loaded" as teenaged Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) buys a beat-up used car that turns out to be alive.

Transformers fans, and they are legion, already know the score. The robot that destroyed the military base is one of the bad Transformers called the Decepticons. Sam's yellow-and-black car, named Bumblebee, is one of the good Transformers called the Autobots. The Autobots and Decepticons have been fighting across space for centuries and have come to Earth to find the source of Transformer life, the All-spark, which looks just like the deadly cube from "Hellraiser."

As the Decepticons continue to wreak havoc on the U.S. defense network, Bumblebee signals his fellow Autobots to join him. So after a full hour has elapsed the main Transformer, Optimus Prime, finally shows up along with teammates whose names and cover vehicles are of interest only to Transformers purists and GM dealers.

Subplots get more crowded as Sam uses his new car to impress Mikaela (Megan Fox), the hottest girl in his class, while in Washington an equally hot Australian hacker, Maggie (Rachel Taylor), tries to crack the Decepticons' code. And that's before John Turturro shows up as part of a super secret agency that for decades has kept the Decepticons' leader, Megatron, frozen inside Hoover Dam.

With no sense for consistency, Bay jumps from slapstick to insult humor ("Let's make fun of fat guys eating doughnuts!") to dead-serious melodrama. The story is all over the place, too, with more holes than plot. And the dialogue is dreadful. Only LaBeouf and Turturro have the proper sense of humor to pull off their hyperbolic lines. These two actors are the only reasons to see the movie.

With all the trademarked Michael Bay badness roiling about, it is easy to overlook something that may have doomed this live-action "Transformers" even with a decent director. By trying to make the Transformers appear realistic the film technicians take away the charm of the toys, cartoons and comics. In their robot forms, the Transformers look like every other computer-generated special effect of the last decade. During Bay's poorly staged and never-ending action sequences, we're just watching one set of metal frames pounding away at another.

They might as well be Go-Bots.