Was the first live-action Transformers movie really long enough ago to qualify for its own nostalgia revisitation? Granted, it’s been 11 years and five movies since that franchise-starter, but it came out of the gate already coasting on the mashed-up nostalgia for producer Steven Spielberg’s ’80s-fantasy glory years and the unrelated toys of that same age. Now Bumblebee, the first Transformers picture not directed by Michael Bay, is even set in 1987 (just a year after the release of the animated Transformers: The Movie). The era only registers superficially, primarily in the outfits and shirt-broadcasted music tastes of 18-year-old Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld). Her vintage band tees, busted moped, and Smiths fandom are all supposed to signify period-appropriate lower-middle-class outsider status—but even Charlie’s rumpled sleepwear looks an awful lot like a 2018-friendly Urban Outfitters version of the ’80s.

That Steinfeld rocks the most genuinely stylish look of any Transformers lead so far isn’t really a complaint, especially because her screen presence is the best thing about Bumblebee. She brings a raw-nerve irritability to Charlie, still smarting from the death of her dad. She also resents her loving mother (Pamela Adlon) for finding solace in an amiable doofus (Stephen Schneider), who gives Charlie that timeless, useless male tip: Hey, you should smile more!

An unsmiling Charlie is lot more compelling than the everydude vibe of 2007 Shia LaBeouf—which makes a particular difference given that she’s essentially re-enacting (or, given the timeline, pre-enacting) the kid-and-first-car-swept-up-into-intergalactic-warfare story of the first film, right down to that first car’s secret identity. Bumblebee’s ’87 disguise is a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, as opposed to the first movie’s Camaro, but his status as a flunky of the eternally bloviating Optimus Prime remains. He’s on Earth to establish an Autobots base, presumably the first measure in their Operation Enduring Occupation. (For more details on this plan, see almost any Transformers sequel.) After Bee loses his memory and his voice box, Charlie stumbles upon him in car form at a repair shop. Little does she know that her knew car/friend is being hunted by a pair of evil Decepticons (Angela Bassett and Justin Theroux) who have manipulated the U.S. government into helping them.