★★

The new Transformers film lacks nuance. It is a blockbuster where attention to detail goes to die. Such is neither surprising from a film produced by Michael Bay, nor an entirely damning indictment in addressing its ability to entertain. As a sequel to 2019’s winning Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts continues the series’ marked improvement on Bay’s unfettered years at the helm, albeit offers, by equal measure, something of a regression. Travis Knight’s return to stop motion animation is Laika’s gain and Bayhem’s loss. As each of Laika’s features enjoy a decade long gestation period, any imminent return for Knight seems unlikely. A pity. The launch of a Hasbro Cinematic Universe amid the settling dust in Rise of the Beasts is far from promising.

Logic lapses into lunacy right from the off in Joby Harold’s deliriously over-round tabled script. Count four other credited writers and weep. For the first time in the now sixteen year old franchise, the robots in disguise have sprouted hair and feathers. These are the so-called Maximals, a branch of warrior Transformers that resemble a collective of Earth’s mightiest beasts of the wild – despite not actually coming from the planet. Ron Perlman voices the unironically named Optimus Primal, a ‘former who stomps around in the shape of a western lowland gorilla, a species as critically endangered in the real world as fresh ideas in the film itself. The now Oscar-winning Michelle Yeoh is Airazor, a peregrine falcon shaped Maximal, and Tongayi Chirisa plays Cheetor. No prizes for guessing his form.

A mind-numbing opening act sees the trio pitted against Peter Dinklage’s Scourge and his army of Terrorcon lackeys, who serve the planet-consuming Unicron, who is voiced listlessly by Broadway favourite Colman Domingo. With no hope of victory, the Maximals flee to Earth with a portal opening MacGuffin they call the Transwarp Key but May as well name “important glowing thingy’. This will be split in two and hidden – National Treasure style – across Earth, with only halfhearted clues left for those dealing to find the parts.

Things get a little better from here on, not least owing to the arrival of Anthony Ramos’ human contingent, Noah Diaz. It’s a paper thin sketching for the In the Heights star, who nonetheless wreaks out an empathy inducing degree of likability. He’s a whizz with electronics – allegedly – and military reject, thrown out for not being a team player or something neither plausible nor well established. No matter. We like Noah because he’s nice to his do eyed younger brother Kris (Dean Scott Vazquez), who has some weakly defined chronic illness. It gives him a sore hand or whatever. No matter. We like him too. Both fare better than Judas and the Black Messiah’s Dominique Fishback, who plays museum researcher Elana. She’s an artefact specialist with abilities that appear to vary from scene to scene and whose whole character revolves solely around an understanding that she is ‘woman who’s never left Brooklyn before’. It’s Elana’s tinkering that sets off the whatsit key thing, summons the nasty botmajiggies to Earth and therein threatens the whole universe for some reason or another. Crumbs. Sucks to be her.

Rise of the Beasts is not a good film. Did you guess? For all the stakes, a total dearth of jeopardy limits the engagement capacity of the action, with characters as likely to stay dead as Marvel is to stop making films about superheroes. It’s also weirdly visually unremarkable. Sure, there’s talent in the mechanics of making the Transformers look real but no art to it. Cinematographer Enrique Chediak shoots the hills of Peru’s Aztec empire with all the majesty of the Yorkshire Dales, the temple remains little more exciting than drystone walling. A weightless final battle shamelessly plunders the climax of Avengers: Infinity War but never hits any of that film’s fist pumping high notes. It’s very hard to care.

And yet, all that said, there is mindless fun to be had in the watching. Unlike the Bay directed quintet, Rise is far from soulless and boasts a clutch of genuinely funny gags. A riff on on former franchise star Mark Wahlberg raises a chuckle, as does a shockingly smutty gag about Noah having been inside one of the Autobots. None of this is enough to illicit any faith in any future of the series but it goes well with popcorn.

T.S.