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Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts is a bungle in the jungle

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts (PG13)
127 minutes, opens on Thursday
2 stars

The story: It is the 1990s and a faction of the Transformers metallic creatures – known as the Maximals – is hiding on Earth disguised as animals, after its planet is devoured by the mega-villain Unicron. Noah (Anthony Ramos) and Elena (Dominique Fishback) are two New Yorkers who become involved in the planetary conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons. In the jungles of Peru, Noah meets Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) and, together, they uncover the existence of the Maximals, including the gorilla-shaped Primal (voiced by Ron Perlman).

Under the hand of director Michael Bay, the first five Transformers movies (2007 to 2017) were about hardware. When the metal giants were not blasting at one another, it was the United States military blasting at them.

Then came the spin-off Bumblebee (2018). It was directed by Travis Knight, who felt secure about the fact that he was adapting a cartoon series and a toy and, unlike Bay, did not feel the need to compensate by making his movie look like an army recruitment video aimed at insecure young men.

Set in the 1980s, Bumblebee dialled back the war noises to put the focus on a single lead character, a young woman Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), and her buddy, the yellow Autobot of the film’s title.

Rich in story, but stripped of Bay-hem – the director’s signature whirling camera moves and fetishistic close-ups of military hardware – Bumblebee was a moderate box-office success.

So, naturally, Hollywood decided that the next movie needed a Bumblebee character-driven approach, but with Bay-style battle action every 20 minutes, culminating in all-out war in the final act.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts stars Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback as the human characters. PHOTO: UIP

Some people love this.

This reviewer gets a migraine from the din and also thinks it is easy to pad out 120 minutes with computer-generated mayhem. Any good done with the human storyline (sorry, Ramos and Fishback) is cancelled out when the missiles start flying.

But the din is why this movie exists. This is, after all, based on a 1990s cartoon about metallic beings smashing one another to a pulp. The television shows were inspired by toys that kids played with by – you guessed it – smashing them against one another.

This movie, directed by Steven Caple Jr, mimics the cartoon and the child’s mode of play in the most head-crushingly repetitive way.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts has cool metal aliens in the jungle that look like a gorilla, falcon and cheetah. PHOTO: UIP

You would think that having Transformers who look like animals would make the fights more interesting. But each alien seems to have a body part that becomes a gun. Every battle descends into the same shoot-out, save for the few armed with something other than a blaster or missile launcher.

Hot take: Cool metal aliens in the jungle that look like a gorilla, falcon and cheetah? Yes. Making them battle one another in cool, interesting ways? No.

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