In the movie “Citizen Kane,” newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane cherished a sled he owned as a child.

Kane had “Rosebud.” I had a Transformer.

If you happened to be a boy in the 1980s, it’s a good chance you and your parents were consumed by the marketing juggernaut known as Transformers.

Mom begrudgingly shelled out the money to get you “Shockwave,” a toy gun that could be “transformed” into an “evil” robot warrior. You watched a cartoon like all the other kids in the neighborhood and made war with your favorite “Autobots and Decepticons” in the back yard.

You were obsessed with the “Dinobots” and “Insecticons” in the first grade.

So some 20 years later, when you have kids of your own, you want them to have that same “magical” experience, or at least recapture the joy of childhood. It’s the kind of nostalgia that makes your heart warm and the marketing people at toy manufacturing companies and movie studios smile.

Thanks to producer Steven Spielberg, the kids (and the kids at heart) are being served up nostalgia in a big way. The new summer film “Transformers” is a satisfyingly fun ride that works, thanks in large part to a genuinely good performance by star Shia LaBouf, and mind-blowing special effects sequences that raise the adrenaline bar in the same way “Terminator 2” and “Jurassic Park” did more than a decade ago.

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The story is pretty much “Terminator 2” meets “The Karate Kid”: Teenage underdog gets the gorgeous alpha female despite the odds, and finds a friend in technology (i.e. the Autobots), all the while being “punished and enslaved” by bad technology (i.e. the Decepticons).

What “Transformers” lacks through cheesy formulaic plot/dialogue and short characterization, it makes up for in compelling acting, and the visual grandiosity of giant robot transforming mayhem. This is American blockbuster filmmaking at its most extravagant.

After a beautiful opening attack sequence, by an HH-53 helicopter that nicely changes into a giant murderous automaton, the picture then moves to its main plot engine: The story of a teenager (Shia LaBouf) getting his first car.

Sam Witwicky’s car is a beat up old Camaro, which just happens to be the Autobot scout Bumblebee. The Camaro and his Autobot friends need’s Sam’s help in finding a cube, called the “Allspark,” before the main villain Megatron and his Decepticons get their cogs on it and use it to take over the world. Right.

The interstellar cube is a “Macguffin,” the rather meaningless device in any action script that provides motivation for good guys and bad guys to have that nice final confrontation.

At every fireworks show, you got to have that heart pounding finale, and the one in “Transformers” is among the finest and most viscerally affecting in the cinematic sci-fi genre.

I loved the designs on these robots, which as completely computer-generated creations, appear so real and tactile you can just smell the oil and scraping metal watching these machines go at it.

It’s also inspiring that the Transformers don’t move in that methodical break-dance style as we’ve been accustomed to in popular culture. These robots moved like ninjas with thousands of individual moving parts combining into an awesome gestalt of motion and energy.

Several things prevent me from rating this movie as completely excellent, despite my great pleasure with much of the picture. First off, the dialogue, outside of the main plotline, is dull, boring and middle of the road. The subplot involving the hackers is useless, sucking up time the filmmakers could have spent more on the transformers, which are clearly the stars of the picture and deserved more “getting to know you” scenes. And how does one travel on-road from the Hoover Dam to downtown Los Angeles in less than five minutes?

When the movie really works, it’s because LaBeouf, as Witwicky, is completely believable, despite the lunacy of the movie’s premise. LaBeouf is a gifted young actor who brings the kind of emotional depth and heart you got with Ralph Macchio or Michael J. Fox in their `80s movies. He’s like one of those smart teenage characters out of a 1980s John Hughes picture, dumped into a 21st century cinematic extravaganza.

There are two small character building scenes in the film, involving LaBeouf’s work that draw big laughs, with Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” popping up nicely in one, and another scene in which Sam’s mom brings up a very touchy subject with her son.

Director Michael Bay’s work is often the most opulent of Hollywood dream making — always a dazzling fireworks show filled with violent machismo, beautiful women, gratuitous glory shots of our heroes in slow motion and tense kinetic scenes delivered through the frenzy of rapid-fire editing. Did I forget to mention the biggest, loudest explosion sequences ever devised?

Nobody shoots destruction, mayhem, and the obligatory car chase sequence with more bravado than Michael Bay does. If you’re looking for something deep or meaningful in his films, there really isn’t “more than meets the eye.”

But what does meet the eye, is indeed a very rich feast of frenetic fury.

If you want to see a fine meal of a smart picture with visual beauty and cerebral depth, check out Pixar’s “Ratatouille” playing next door.

But if you’re still hungry for that rich, guilt-ridden desert, well get the bib out, because Michael Bay bakes a mean cinematic confection of sweet cybernetic carnage.

(Three stars out of four.)

Neil Nisperos can be reached at 737-1059 or nnisperos@lompocrecord.com.