Movie review: 'Transformers One' fills in the blanks

There, director Josh Cooley goes back to the days when robots were miners and transforming was limited to a precious few.

The world, we discover with the new film, is under the thumb of Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), a real politician who thinks he can keep the masses down just by removing their chips.

Two rogues, however, decide to enter a big IACON 5000 race and earn their way to a better life.

Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) have plenty of good-natured bot-room conversations and an energy that impresses those who can help them. Once they discover how to transform, they’re on their way to setting this story in motion. How D-16 becomes Megatron is more interesting than how Orion Pax becomes Optimus Prime, but the switch happens in less than two hours and there is enough action to fill a small arena show.

Cooley often cants his camera or uses low angles to give some sense of the universe. It’s effective but “Transformers One” is fairly simple, for those in the know. It introduces other characters (who play bigger parts in later life) but lets them horse around here.

Best of all is Keegan-Michael Key’s B-127, who morphs into Bumblebee. He gives plenty of clues to his later persona and manages to seem fine with his place in the world.

Scarlett Johansson is just acceptable as Elita-1, the sole female (or female-sounding) character in the core bunch. She’s basically around to push the plot and get the others’ gears moving.

Oddly, Hamm doesn’t have the heft to make his villain menacing. He’s fine doing an impression of “The Boys’” Homelander, but this isn’t the original it might have been. (His laugh sounds like something from a Dickens character.) When the two friends get him in their clutches, it’s time for this “Transformers” to bear down.

There’s plenty of loud race action, a “peasants versus royals” subplot and an attempt to make mechanical objects exhibit heart. It’s “Starlight Express” for a generation that never heard of the musical. Fights look like something the “Rock’em Sock’em robots” might have pioneered.

And lines sound like they’ve been tested on the political trail: “The truth is what I make it,” Sentinel tells the miners.

Visually, “Transformers One” delivers. It has high-end animation and a look that hardly screams Saturday morning television. The concept, however, still depends on your interest in a toy that starts as one thing and turns into another. In short, there's a "bot"-tom line.

Parents who end up transforming into Uber drivers to ferry the key audience will be thrilled to know it’s less than two hours and doesn’t interfere with a momentary nap.