Neither hitting the high of the character-centric, good-times 80s Ambin vibes of Bumblebee, nor the bombastic excess that defines Michael Bay’s OG series, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a new installment that flattens already well-trodden ground. It’s a mediocre action movie with big globs of CGI robots once again colliding in conflict that left me disengaged. We have more familiar Autobots in this one, including their leader Optimus Prime, and there’s a new slew of animal-themed robots, though I’m always left wondering why they choose specific builds and stick with them since it was established they can copy Earthly designs. Regardless, it’s another story about good robots and bad robots trying to beat one another to a special magical MacGuffin that may or may not destroy the universe, and it all feels a bit too same-y from the six other Transformers movies. The new characters are bland and stock, with Pete Davidson supplying our lead Transformer robot buddying up with the young man (Anthony Ramos) who turns to grand theft auto to try and pay for his little brother’s health care. To go along with our wide-eyed hero discovering this hidden war, we have a brainy sidekick (Dominique Fishback) who shares in the hyperventilating. I kept thinking about how filming these movies is just measuring out a lot of wide exterior shots and saying, “Yeah, there’s going to be a giant robot in there eventually.” Credit director Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II) for having relatively restrained editing to better orient his action and audience, which is not something we can say about Bay’s movies. The problem with Rise of the Beasts is that it’s movie number seven rather than the first, so it has no novelty and whatever differences it offers are microscopically minimal. If you’ve seen any of the other Transformers movies, you’ve seen essentially what this one has to offer, so unless you have young children who are heretofore unblemished in their cinematic knowledge of Transformers, feel free to just wait for a better movie.

Nate’s Grade: C