I know what was the intention of the parody you showed. No need to go into detail of that.
..giving us a C-grade scifi movie and a B-grade action movie.
I'd dsiagree with those grades personally. The scifi level wasn't high and it wasn't hard, but it was light and a good light scifi story at that. I also thought for an action movie level was higher than a B-, but then again I'm not good at picking grades. If anything I'm good at rating something from a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it an 8. I would agree that it could've been better and that there are some things to deliver now since they can now expand on things, but I, again, thought it was solid enough.
And no, I didn't "shut my brian off" to enjoy it. I have to like a movie as a whole, an action set peice or some eye candy camera movement doesn't do the trick for me. Die Another Day has plenty of those, and I despise it and I'm not a huge James Bond fanatic.
That and his last really good film that had a damned good script to go with was The Rock.
The Rock was a very good film, but I've liked more than just The Rock in Bay's filmography. But I personally think Transformers was a really good movie, not great but a very good movie. It didn't have the best script in the world and it won't win any awards, but it was solid enough.