'Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' Is EASILY One Of The Best In The Franchise

During the '90s, a new faction of Transformers - the Maximals - join the Autobots as allies in the battle for Earth.

So I will qualify this review with the fact that I am not a huge Transformers guy. Never watched the cartoons/beast wars, never played with the toys and I do NOT like 4 of the 6 movies in the franchise so far. I really liked the first one as a horny 14 year-old and enjoyed 'Bumblebee' but that's it.

All that said, I had a great time with Rise of the Beasts. I'll break it into pros and cons for those of you wondering if you should spend money to go check this out. 

PROS:

- The action rocks. Everyone loves seeing the "chee ku ka kur kee" noise as a semi truck turns into a space warrior. Shit gets blown up, there is a bigger scale of warfare and some more "primal" elements to it. 

- The soundtrack is awesome. It is basically it's own character in the movie that makes an ok scene good to great. Non-stop 90's bangers 

- The cast works great. I specifically liked Anthony Ramos as the Sam Witwicky fill in and his chemistry with his transformer, Mirage, who is voiced by Pete Davidson. Davidson is a dude that I think I SHOULD feel a lot of fatigue for but he is undeniably good in this.

- There is a big twist at the end of this movie that sets the stage for a VERY cool future for the franchise. 

Cons: 

- It's dumb. But only as dumb as any of the other entries into the franchise. It's very tough to ground these movies with any sort of legitimate character depth but that has never stopped them from trying anyway. 

- It's probably about 15-20 minutes too long. It clocks in at 2 hours which unfortunately just the standard for franchise movies now. 

I highly recommend checking it out if you like dumb, turn-off-your-brain movies. You aren't gonna get a ton of substance, but the style is great. I also recommend seeing this in the opening week with a crowd because this is a big time crowd effect movie.