Even as a child I had absolutely no time for staying indoors with a view to making two make-believe robots wrestle one-another in some kind of androgynous copulation.

I always saw action figures as a pastime for the weak and needy, the shy and retiring – the geeks.

If they wanted to stay inside getting asthma from their dusty old pit house while I was out playing football, paddling in streams and climbing trees, then that was the geeks’ perogative.

As this sequel boots into action I was more bemused than a public schoolboy asked to hoy coal onto the fire to warm the house. I may as well have been partaking in a Stephen Hawking lecture on Theoretical Quantum Gravity.

There was an almighty war ensuing before me, and it was a bit like watching Germany v Italy in the World Cup – I didn’t care who won, but I was rather enjoying seeing them kick 10 bells out of one another.

And so I’d met the robots in a fast paced opening few rounds that were visually among the best I have ever seen on the big screen, even if I had no idea what was happening.

Then we cut to the humans in this tale, and the protagonist Sam (Shia LaBeouf) who keeps a Transformer in his garage (as you do), a piece of mystical Kryptonite-esque flint in his pocket (which has much the same effect on kitchen appliances as water did on Gremlins – or Mogwais if you want to be pedantic), and has an impossibly pouty princess on his arm.

He wants to be a normal boy and go off to college, and so off he goes.

Within minutes his faithfulness to little miss low-cut top pouty princess (if she can’t be bothered to act, I can’t be bothered to remember her name) is tested by yet another drop-dead gorgeous nubile young college thing, and while I’m not one for dropping spoilers – she turns out to be an evil Transformerbot thingy. Don’t worry, if I could see it coming, you will.

Cue a series of car chases featuring what has to be the sexiest Chevrolet Camaro I’ve ever set eyes upon, along with yet more explosions and robot fighting.

All this turns out to be because some Transformer overlord dude wants to put the Sun out for good – wiping out the human race, and it turns out that only Sam and his female co-bra – I mean star – can save the day.

And so with the help of the US Army – who else? – and a resurrected old-boy robot with a walking stick, Sam sets about searching for a ‘Matrix Key’ buried in a Transformer tomb somewhere in Egypt, that will destroy the baddie robots.

Although, at two hours and 30 minutes, I reckon I could have caught myself a flight over to the land of the Pharaohs and found the wretched key.

One thing that did help me through was the green shoots of humour that sprouted through now and then. Six-inch tall robots cussing in squeaky voices is funny. Fact.