I totally agree with your assessment of the movie. Here were some of my gripes with the movie ...

1. Carly was useless! And she wasn't even that hot; far less hot than Megan Fox that's for sure. I half-expected those blimp lips of hers to be a Decepticon in disguise, ready to explode. There were some really awkwardly slow scenes with her in it that just annoyed the hell out of me. (the one where she stares off into the distance x2)

Carly was supposed to be a mechanic in the old Transformers stories. I guess Fox took that from her in the first 2 movies.

2. Shockwave was underutilized and wasted as a mere soldier. "Main villain" my soft fleshy ass! We only saw him in Ukraine with that techno-Shai-Hulud monstrosity and all he says is "Optimus" or "Prime" or both, I forget and then at the final fight scenes. When I first saw him in the promotionals, I thought he would have a bigger role. In Transformers lore, he was supposed to rival Megatron in power and ambition, except far more logical and brutally efficient. Speaking of which, Megatron should have died in Africa (which btw was a horrible scene in and of itself). It would have been awesome if Shockwave deposed the ailing Megatron and took command.

I liked that Bay did not hold back in showing humans dying. When those civvies were vaporized I was like "Oh shit! About time they show the robots mean business."

I loved "Wash" as Dutch, he was awesome. Along with Malkovitch as the anal-retentive boss. In the job scenes, I was like, why is the movie "Horrible Bosses" doing in Transformers? haha

Ken Jeong was hilarious as the Wang. HIGH-LARIOUS!

Oh, and it was nice seeing Dempsey as a villain in an action film.