Remember the old theme song of this 1980s cartoon?

Transformers,

More than meets the eye,

Transformers,

Robots in disguise

Boy, we are a long long way from that...

In the hands of director Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon) and executive producer Steven Spielberg, what was once an ingenious sci-fi cartoon has been, er-hem, transformed into a bona fide summer blockbuster. Transformers the movie packs a huuuge wallop, with its eye-popping CGI of fantastic robots that can shape-shift within seconds.

In a film where the computer-generated effects are clearly the hero, the plot could have taken a backseat. Thankfully, it hasn't.

The well-developed storyline centres on teenage boy Shia LaBeouf who wants to buy his first car so he can impress girls. With his small budget, he manages to purchase a beat-up yellow Chevy Camaro — only to wake up one morning and see it driving away. Thinking that a thief is stealing his car, he pursues it. Soon, he finds himself standing face-to-face with a menacing 20-foot robot communicating with a UFO!

In flies his beat-up yellow Camaro, which morphs itself astonishingly into a giant robot to rescue him from the threat. Shia soon learns that his car is one of the Autobots — the good guys — who have come to earth to find the Allspark, their source of life, before the evil Decepticons get to it. Meanwhile, the army has gotten involved and all hell is about to break loose...

Transformers is easily the best popcorn film of the season. All the others that came before it — Shrek, Pirates, Fantastic Four and Spidey — pale in comparison to the gee-whiz awestruck sensation you get from watching Transformers. The special effects are truly top-of-the-line, while the story and acting are good enough to keep you in thrall.

Michael Bay — or Mayhem Bayhem, as some call him — has done a much better job with Transformers than he did with The Island or Pearl Harbor. What's more, he's even injected some lean mean muscularity into the robots' new look. Diehard fans are complaining that they look "too gay". We, on the other hand, couldn't be happier.