During an early break in the action in “Eagle Eye,” Shia LaBeouf attempts to sum up his plight to co-star Michelle Monaghan but says that if he told her what just happened—about being busted out of federal custody by a rogue crane—that it would sound too crazy. That can be said for the whole of “Eagle Eye,” a techno-thriller seemingly created by people who understand technology only as it’s explained on the evening news. Computers know everything you do! Computers can do anything they want! We’re all helpless at the hands of our Windows Vista-powered machine overlords! Except, well, not really.

Computers can do a great many things, but what they have not yet succeeded in doing is making a movie like “Eagle Eye” remotely plausible, or at least watchable. Movies still thankfully rely on humans for that latter quality, and here, LaBeouf, Monaghan and the rest of the “Eagle Eye” cast pick up the slack created by a recycled, warmed-over plot and some average action sequences. We’ve seen this all before, with bits stolen from “2001,” “The Terminator,” “The Game” and even “North by Northwest,” and while “Eagle Eye” doesn’t offer anything new, it does offer something inoffensive.

Jerry Shaw (LaBoeuf) is the first target of technology gone awry here. Returning home following the funeral of his twin brother, Jerry finds his apartment chock full of weapons, airplane manuals and bomb-making materials. A cell-phone call from a mysterious no-nonsense woman alerts him that the FBI is about to close in and arrest him and, sure enough, the feds bust the door down a few seconds later. Jerry eventually escapes (thanks to that crane), and meets up with Rachel (Monaghan), a single mom who’s been receiving the same sorts of phone calls as Jerry and believes her son is in danger. The mystery woman on the phone orders them to team up and sends the pair on a series of bizarre quests, while an FBI agent (Billy Bob Thornton) and an Air Force investigator (Rosario Dawson) remain in hot pursuit.

As Jerry and Rachel eventually discover, the mystery woman is actually some sort of nigh-omnipotent supercomputer named ARIA, with the power to control trains, cranes, planes and pretty much everything else—even things that might not be hooked up to a computer. ARIA monitors everything from cell phone calls to surveillance cameras. In a pinch, it can even kill someone using a power line. There is nothing this computer can’t do, it seems, except come up with a master plan that doesn’t involve the main characters running around like they’re in a video game.

It’s bad enough that the screenplay, by John Glenn and Travis Wright, unapologetically steals from a dozen other movies (including lifting the crop-duster scene from “North by Northwest,” but substituting an unmanned aerial drone for the duster), but what’s worse is that it’s just so dumb. And, let’s not forget, director D.J. Caruso’s last film (also with LaBoeuf) was “Disturbia,” a retread of “Rear Window.” If you’re going to steal, at least do something interesting with the material.

Despite his ubiquity at the box office and everywhere else, LaBoeuf is still immensely likable, and he helps save “Eagle Eye” from being the sort of rage-inducing movie it should be. Thornton and Michael Chiklis, here playing a beleaguered Secretary of Defense, come through with decent supporting roles, as does Rosario Dawson, who is all too quickly shuffled off screen once the plot gets out of control. They don’t have much to work with, but the human cast in “Eagle Eye” is more interesting than it should be, a credit more to the actors than to the ridiculous story. They can’t save “Eagle Eye” from being afflicted with terminal stupidity, but they at least mitigate the disaster. Until computers start cranking out lame screenplays on their own and creating digital actors, we can at least take comfort in the fact that no matter how dumb a movie gets, a few capable humans can make it somewhat tolerable.