When I was growing up, no movie could take me out of this world quite like a giant monster movie. I got a twinge of nostalgia for the days of "Godzilla" when I saw "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen."

Make no mistake: as a movie, the "Transformers" sequel is slovenly, bombastic, overly busy, and at two-and-a-half hours is far too long. Yet whenever "Revenge Of The Fallen" reaches another clash of the robot titans, it becomes more than just a souped-up toy commercial. These toys have wizardry and grandeur, and the movie is like the super-sized, metal-on-metal version of an old nuclear-mutant monster battle.

Once again, the Decepticons, those evil robots that look like junk heaps of pewter designed by H.R. Giger, are going to war against the Autobots, the friendly converted vehicles who wear their machine guts on the outside.

The plot, which sends Shia LaBeouf's Sam off to college and then on to the ruins of Egypt, suggests an awkward fusion of Bret Easton Ellis and Indiana Jones. It offers more frantic busyness than it does logic.

Yet LaBeouf, a very appealing actor, seems to grow more confidently chiseled with each movie, and he plays off Megan Fox as if they were in a romantic comedy. Fox is sort of like Angelina Jolie before Jolie got too serious to be sexy.

Whenever the U.S. military comes into the picture, "Revenge of the Fallen" lumbers. Yet director Michael Bay knows he needs to make the movie bigger, louder, smashier and on the mechanical level more crazily imaginative, and he succeeds. It was an inspired touch to set the climactic battle amid the Great Pyramids, featuring a Decepticon so humongous it just about waddles with power.

"Revenge of the Fallen" may be a massive overdose of popcorn greased with motor oil, but it knows how to feed your inner 10-year-old's appetite for destruction.