From its thinly sketched teen protagonist to its deluge of hero-will-rise clichés, Max Steel evinces all of the imagination and ambition you’d expect from a movie based on a bestselling line of action figures.

At its best, “Max Steel” shares elements with “Smallville” and “Teen Wolf,” using the supernatural as a metaphor for awkward adolescence. At its worst, it’s more like “Transformers” — an extended toy commercial, noisy and forgettable.

As the stuntmen duke it out and we see close-ups of the two actors making silly faces, it's hard not imagine a Mystery Science Theater 3000 feature in the making.

If the past is any indication, Hendler, Winchell, Bello and everyone else involved have the capacity to create interesting, original, and engaged art. Max Steel is none of those things.

[A] drearily lame time-waster.