Not to damn it with faint praise, but "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a flaming pile of poo. It's such a stinking stinkhole of stinkitude that the producers are writing million-dollar checks to individual moviegoers to apologize for wasting their time.

Actually, even if said producers really were writing those checks, it wouldn't remotely be worth your time to hold your nose, see the movie and cash in later. Oh, yeah. It's that bad.

"Revenge of the Fallen" begins with some colorless prehistoric business -- spear-toting aboriginals from 17,000 B.C. tangle with a giant metallic meanie -- that's sort of like that bit with the apes at the beginning of "2001: A Space Odyssey," only if "2001" had been based on a video game and directed by Uwe Boll.

Since the aboriginals don't speak or write English, the filmmakers' capacity to present jokes involving the words "(male genital reference)," "(clinical male genital reference)," "(gluteal reference)," "(vulgar male genital reference)" and "(obscene male genital reference)" is severely constrained. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is the shortest segment of the movie.

The next item of business is to reintroduce the characters from 2007's "Transformers," and it must have been sweet relief for director Michael Bay and his three screenwriters to finally be able to unleash their blunt force wit, because they quickly crack a joke about a small dog, um, exerting his carnal vigor against a larger dog. Twice.

At any rate, heroic Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college, forcing him to be temporarily parted from his slinky girlfriend, Mikaela Barnes (Megan Fox). On the Things That Go Vroom! side, Optimus Prime and his Autobot buddies have teamed up with the U.S. military to round up and dismantle fleeing Decepticons.

Don't let the jargon confuse you: Autobot = good, Decepticon = bad, battle between any two (or more) robots = loud, incomprehensible and boring.

There's more: Sam has been implanted with secret robot code that will help the Decepticons become all powerful, and destroy the sun and blah, blah, blah.

Besides being utterly incapable of subtlety and prone to visual clutter at all times -- watch him pointlessly swirl his camera around Mikaela and Sam while they talk about their feelings -- Bay is the most overrated action director in movies.

The 50-plus-minute robot-human warfare sequence that wraps up the movie is so ragingly incoherent, so numbingly repetitive, so sadistically dragged out that I could almost literally hear 900 people abandon all hope of being entertained by anything, ever again.

Except for its brief, inert beginning, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is almost aggressively awful from start to finish. I wanted to kill Sam's unbearably irritating parents half-a-minute after meeting them, and wanted to kill myself after his mom unwittingly ingests a marijuana brownie.

I wanted to kill Michael Bay after a miniature Decepticon applies a lustful bump 'n' grind to Mikaela's leg, and my murderous urges were actually satisfied when one character dies attempting to sprinkle magic dust over a fallen comrade and wakes up in robot heaven. Did you know that there's a robot hell, too? And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

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