For a while, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts looked like it might be another Bumblebee--a Transformers movie that lacks any of the pizzazz of the Michael Bay flicks but which actually tells a decent story about characters you actually care about. For the first 45 minutes to an hour, we get the most compelling and relatable version yet of the story about a regular person accidentally becoming friends with an alien robot who was secretly a car. But then the plot really kicks in, and suddenly we're watching a Michael Bay Transformers movie--but without Bay's skill as an action filmmaker.

When Michael Bay was directing Transformers movies, they weren't exactly pinnacles of storytelling. In fact, they had awful stories that never even made sense together--each new movie would open with some reveal that made every previous movie make even less sense than they already did. But they were also Michael Bay movies, which means that (aside from Revenge of the Fallen) they had tons of extremely dope action and generally looked sick as hell even during the non-action parts.

Rise of the Beasts, from Creed II director Steven Caple Jr, doesn't look terrible or anything like that. It just looks like a generic big-budget, CGI-heavy affair. There's no flair, no signature to it. And so it's a major problem that the story is bad, because the filmmaking doesn't elevate the experience to make up for that.