Bumblebee is easily the best installment in the Transformers cinematic franchise to date. The writing this time around is far more driven and concise with fewer pitfalls, the robot designs are delightfully retro, and the relationship between heroine and Autobot onscreen feels moving and genuine, making for a Transformers movie with a surprising amount of soul contained within. There are a few, maybe one or two, story beats that I felt were extraneous, and the villains suffer a bit from low presence (truthfully I can’t remember their names or even if said names were said more than once), but they served their purpose well enough, All in all, Bumblebee is a humble, more complete beast and thankfully doesn’t attempt any of the cheap laugh cringe-humor bullshit that plagued its predecessors. Definitely worth a watch.