As ludicrous as it sounds, there are slivers of evidence in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen suggesting director Michael Bay believes he's halfway through making his equivalent of Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle. That means we'll have to endure two more effects-laden extravaganzas about an alien race of shape-shifting machines. Best-case scenario: Bay is aping The Matrix and so moviegoers will only have to gird themselves for one more installment. A high tolerance for blunt force trauma is essential.

I found the first Transformers to be entertaining summer fare and wasn't bothered by the lack of nutrition. Even more bloated than its 2007 predecessor, this over-engineered spectacle inspired by Hasbro's toys again features Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox as the humans caught in a war between Autobots and Decepticons. But it's a never-ending, blundering mess that barely offers the thrill of watching cool metallic gizmos do battle. It careens from the crassly mundane to the preposterously cosmic without regard for the consequences, most lamentably, two-and-a-half hours of precious time wasted.

Steven Spielberg's fingerprints were visible in some of the humorous family dynamics fused to the action sequences in the first movie. Although he retains an executive producer credit, Spielberg's influence is missing. This is all Michael Bay and it's not a pretty sight. Even Ms. Fox's centerfold allure has been blotted out by Bay's adolescent sense of humor, which favors jokes about humping dogs and frisky parental units, along with borderline racist banter between Autobots.

A trio of screenwriters has culled fragments from myth and the sci-fi canon to piece together a plot that's simplistic and yet dizzyingly nonsensical. An alliance was formed in 17,000 B.C. between our ancestors and a race of alien machines from outer space. There was a civil war amongst the robots -- a blood feud that prevented a renegade 'bot from destroying our sun and cutting short the planet's history.

That alliance is paralleled by a contemporary arrangement between the U.S. government and Autobots intended to thwart the aims of the rogue Decepticons, who have been biding their time as cars, trucks and airplanes until, led by a junkyard dog dubbed the Fallen, they could fulfill what he intended back before the Stone Age. A secret military unit called the NEST, led by Major Lennox (Josh Duhamel), has been working closely with the Autobots to keep the Decepticons in check.

LaBeouf's teenage hero Sam Witwicky helped make the malarkey in the first movie tolerable. Now he's part of the problem. The Decepticons are seeking a second energy source and the benevolent Optimus Prime implores Sam to help, but he's tired of being special. He's no longer a naïf-like savior; he's a confident young adult anxious to escape his parents by attending college on the east coast (while maintaining a long-distance relationship with Mikaela.) He doesn't even want his trusty Camaro Bumblebee to come along.

Turns out, the key to thwarting the Decepticons is all in Sam's mind and not even the freedom of undergraduate life can prevent him from serving the cause. Judging by the dorm life witnessed, Larry Flynt is the dean of students at the institution of higher learning where Sam's enrolled. Beware of lusty co-eds is the first lesson learned when one vixen, who isn't what she seems, puts the moves on Sam. In the ensuing mayhem, the college library is ransacked, an indication of where the movie's priorities lie.

From that point on, it's a race to find a hidden source of energy the Decepticons require. Sam and his entourage fetch techie Simmons (John Turturro) from a deli in Brooklyn, make a stop at the Smithsonian (located not in our nation's capital but in what looks to be California's low desert) and then travel to Egypt to search for a tomb. The seemingly endless climactic showdown takes place there, as if the region wasn't troubled enough.

The movie's most glaring flaw is that it's padded with paeans to the U.S. military. Whatever deal Bay cut with the Pentagon to gain access to American weaponry adds a good forty-five minutes to the runtime. His effort to underscore the prowess of our armed forces, patriotic though it may be, eclipses the film's main conflict.

Many moviegoers will find that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen still delivers the goods from the action standpoint. I wish I could concur. Maybe the only thing on which detractors and defenders of the movie can agree is that a third installment will be made. 

(Released by DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures; rated "PG-13" for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material and some drug material.)