Comment | @pumpkin–3: Can you please let go of your insistence now?
"Bog standard" may be an EXQUISITE term, but to an American ear, it's as unintelligible as if it were German.
Neither I nor anybody I've ever known in 62 years knows the word "bog" to mean anything other than "swamp" (Sumpf) or in the verb "to bog down" "to get bogged down".. i.e. to become badly hampered by something such as an excess of paperwork or other stumbling blocks.
A good American expression, which I "believe" is correct here (not knowing the nuances of the B.E. expression) is, as @sagenferget proposed:
cookie-cutter
or you prefer something very conversational and colloquial, then:
ho-hum would be inventive and well-understood.
Example:
"We expected the film to be something really special, but sadly it was so ho-hum that we almost walked out."
both ho-hum and cookie-cutter mean very ordinary but carry different nuances:
cookie-cutter = von der Stange
ho-hum implies, to me at least, something between "boring" and "very average" ,"formulaic"
Just a note:
Funny thing about "risqué" words...
To an American, "bollocks" doesn't sound the least bit foul, dirty, offensive, impolite or anything other than perhaps very English and quaint. You could use it in front of your granny. We think of the expression, "Oh, bollocks!" as a very soft and rather funny exclamation tantamount to, "Oh, darn it!" or "Oh, fudge it!" Also to us Americans, one could easily say to small children, "Stop your bollocksing, you two!"
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