Even fans of the toys will be disappointed by this mess of a movie. If Transformers: The Movie teaches us anything, it's that in all the cleverly-conceived, gimmicky, buy-them-all robots Hasbro foisted on toy shelves, one was sorely forgotten: Script-itron. A confusing, jumbled, and chaotic narrative moves through chases and fights with barely any breathing space and introduces so many weird characters and things that only a kid who owns all the toy tie-ins could tell them apart.

The soundtrack is obnoxious, nonstop '80s rock music and the animation is TV-grade. Except for the Dinobots, it's pretty difficult to tell one unfolded Transformer from another. The vocal cast is a curious mix of prolific cartoon-voiceover specialists and veteran character actors, who attempt to imbue their characters with stereotypical personalities that the impersonal drawings don't convey. Most notoriously, Orson Welles logged his final screen credit as the unenthused, whispered voice of Unicron, and Leonard Nimoy is the voice of Megatron.