Over the years, the summer movie season has turned into the summer sequel season as studios queue up their surefire hits to get the most bang for their buck. Unfortunately, the latest spate of heroes are starting to get a little long in the tooth as Spidey turned Emo, McClane turned old and Captain Jack turned into something you have to sit through 3.5 hours to find out about. With all of these sequels in contention, it’s no surprise that a little known indie film about some obscure children’s toys takes away the title of Best Action Movie of the Summer.

Michael Bay’s long awaited Transformers movie succeeds partially because it is so new, despite being based on characters that are over 20 years old, but mostly because spectacular special effects, plenty of humor and even more robotic transformations that make the jaws of fanboys and regular folks alike hit the grimy theater floor.

If you’re looking for a story driven piece, this ain’t it. The basics of the plot are laid out by the voice of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, reprising his role from the original cartoon) at the beginning of the film. The Autobots and Decepticons used to live in harmony on their home planet of Cybertron before Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons, made a power grab and plunged the planet into civil war. The focus of the conflict, the Allspark, a large life giving cube, was hurled into the cosmos as a result of the fighting and eventually made itself to Earth. Megatron, in an attempt to track down the Allspark, crashed into the ice of the arctic where he was discovered by Captain Archibald Witwicky, the great-great-grandfather of lovable goof and auto aficionado Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf).

The movie takes no time in establishing the tempo of the action as 10 minutes into the film you’re treated to the first transformation and the first massive action piece as the first Decepticon attacks and destroys a military base in Qatar, in an attempt to hack into the military’s computers, presumably to locate the Allspark or Megatron. Unfortunately the flimsiness of the story doesn’t lend itself to too many answers, but luckily the movie moves along at a brisk enough pace, that there’s never enough time to ask questions.

Meanwhile, Sam is treated to his first car, a ’78 yellow and black Camaro that also happens to be capable of transforming into a 20 foot tall sentient robot. Soon Sam and the object of his affection, Mikaela (Megan Fox), are caught up in the battle between Autobots and Decepticons as both seek to gain the Allspark, the coordinates of which are encoded in Captain Witwicky’s antique eyeglasses, before the other side does. They’re eventually joined by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson as soldiers who survived the attack at Qatar, as well as Jon Voight as the Secretary of Defense and Jon Turturro as a member of the shadowy government agency Sector Seven. Rachel Taylor and Anthony Anderson round out the cast as security analysts employed to help figure out who conducted the initial attack, as well as provide comedic relief in the form of Anderson.

This movie is much, much funnier than you would expect from an action movie, and uses comedy to help defuse the tension from the action scenes as well as hide the fact that the story has a few too many holes in it. LeBeouf does the somewhat stumbling smart-ass teen routine that he’s gotten so good at, while Anderson provides plenty of laugh out loud moments as the terrified hacker.