When director Michael Bay does the Hollywood hit-and-miss, he goes all out. Hits slammed home the space-ride thumper that was “”Armageddon”” and made “”The Rock”” a classic with its bang-bang cheekiness. But Bay’s misses saw him sopping “”Bad Boys 2″” in sweaty overkill, right before his balloon-headed romp through sci-fi sunk “”The Island.”” So goes the mercurial career of this action flick-maker, now in charge of putting the planetwide war between Autobots and Decepticons on this summer’s screens.

Maybe Bay can trade on DreamWorks’ do-no-wrong brand name, partnering with producer Steven Spielberg to make the blockbuster “”Transformers”” more than a bunch of mean-ass toasters going at it over Earth’s soil. The angle: These canheads have as much empathetic personality as their roundly human designs suggest. Departing from the old “”Transformers”” boxcar-like makeup, this new film’s CGI-wonders have as many parts to their physiologies as to their personalities.

How could Shia LaBeouf ever spark teenie love with Megan Fox, if not for the help of his ’70s Camaro, aka the softhearted Bumblebee? Pepper in some more identities – Jazz is a Pontiac Solstice with chic that faces off with Starscream, a pigheaded fighter-jet – and this bot-cast has tooled its intergalactic struggle with some worldly spunk.

July’s apocalyptic battle finds Tyrese running with Josh Duhamel across Qatar’s dunes from Blackout, an electromagnetic pulse-plopping helicopter, and his robot spawn Scorponok, a mechanized freak show with pincers. A bulk of the old faves from the “”Transformers”” universe return; squad leaders Megtron and Optimus Prime war across Hoover Dam and into Los Angeles for the Allspark, a life-giving element for their mechanized race.

This all-or-nothing stab at summer greatness could be a nice nostalgia rubbing for fanboys – the Transformers are cult media icons spawning pulp in TV, comics, action figures and cartoons. Or, at the very least, it can be the best in vehicular eye candy that a three-figure budget can buy.