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'Pacific Rim Uprising' is exactly the robots vs. monsters sequel you expect it to be, for better or worse (B-)

Do you like watching giant robots fight monsters, often with little to no regard for how much destruction ends up in their wake? Great news: There's something in Pacific Rim Uprising for you. It's another movie in which Jaegers (the giant robots in question) are piloted by humans to protect humanity from the Kaiju (the giant, Godzilla-like monsters in question), and that may be enough to sell you a ticket right off the bat.

Uprising is less interesting than its predecessor -- anyone who hasn't seen the first Pacific Rim should watch that instead, or at least first -- to the point where at least one scene and one visual gag are redux from the first movie, but it revels in its bombastic action and sense of fun. It's a movie perfect for people who just want dumb, explosive action, yet it's got just enough story and depth to encourage more demanding moviegoers to stick around for the ride.

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The sequel makes do without the original's director, screenwriter and most of the cast. The ensemble of characters, though, is more compelling this time around. John Boyega stars as Jake Pentecost, whose father was a war hero 10 years ago during and after the events of the first film (and who is known, even in the movie's universe, as "the guy who made a speech about cancelling the apocalypse"). He's a more charming lead than Charlie Hunnam's character Raleigh in Pacific Rim, which might be why this movie glosses right over Raleigh's existence. Boyega brings some needed levity to moments in ways that will feel familiar to fans of his Star Wars character.

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There's also a spotlight on Amara (Cailee Spaeny), a teenage Jaeger fangirl who grew up alone and winds up in an Ender's Game-esque boot camp where Jake and his old friend Nate (Scott Eastwood) train young recruits to pilot Jaegers in case Earth needs defending again -- which of course it will.  Charlie Day and Burn Gorman return as awkward scientists who double as comic relief and a tool for driving the plot forward, while  Rinko Kikuchi returns but is underutilized as Mako Mori, Raleigh's former Jaeger co-pilot.

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There are the beginnings of some interesting story threads here, particularly with Amara, but the plot never sticks around long enough to pull on them. Every scene serves only to push us to the next piece of disaster porn, where cities get destroyed as much by Jaeger pilots as they do by monsters. At one point, the good guys begin to literally pull skyscrapers down on top of a Kaiju in hopes of stopping it, because who cares about mass destruction as long as it serves the greater good?

Those fights can be glorious, though. There are some fun-if-predictable curveballs thrown into the robot vs. monster machine that make for fun sequences, and unlike certain other movies featuring giant robots, the action isn't too hard to follow.

Like the first film, Uprising wears its anime influence on its sleeve, even paying homage to the giant Gundam Wing statue in Tokyo that's famous among giant robot fans worldwide. If that's the sort of thing you're into, Pacific Rim Uprising aims to please.

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Pacific Rim Uprising (B-)

PG-13 (for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language.) 111 minutes. In wide release.