Why I won't review <i>Transformers 3</i>

Why I won't review
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As I write this, I'm sitting in a customer waiting area at my Honda dealership, while my car is being serviced. I'm told that my wait here will be up to two-and-a-half hours, while they bring my car's service up to date, to the tune of hundreds of dollars.

For some reason, the TV in this waiting area is tuned to reruns of Saved by the Bell, one of the more noxious teen comedies ever to pollute the TV airwaves. It's the episode where Screech invents "Zit-Off" acne cream in chemistry class.

This is many people's idea of hell, ranking right up there with having a root canal and listening to an 8-year-old's violin recital.

And yet I believe this experience is preferable to making the journey into Manhattan to see and review Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which, as I understand it, is also 2.5-hours long. Longer, actually.

Ah, Michael Bay - still clinging to his title as master of cinematic excess. And, no doubt, excrescence. In this case, I'll leave that to others to judge.

The official press screening for Transformers: Dark of the Moon - not to be confused with Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" - is tonight (6/27/11).

(Never mind that blurb machine Pete Hammond is already being quoted in the TV commercials as calling it a "total blast.")

I'm skipping it. I don't plan on seeing the movie or reviewing it. I'm invoking the "Life is too short for this bulls**t" clause in my self-employment contract, something I only do on the rarest of occasions.

Thankfully Transformers 3 is being screened so close to its Wednesday opening that it's much too late for the deadline for the weekly magazine for which I review film. Which means that the only person who might require me to write a review of T3 is me.

And I'm giving myself permission to skip it.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is obviously not review-dependent. It is, if anything, critic-proof, just as the last two Transformers efforts were.

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