Baby Driver Doesn't Drive Up The Fun

It is hard to underestimate the amount of hype surrounding the new film Baby Driver. The film currently has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and has some calling it the best film of 2017, so why did I leave the theater feeling disappointed?

Baby Driver tells the story of Baby (a young man played beautifully by Ansel Elgort) who is, get this, a driver. Baby drives get away cars for a crime ring led by Kevin Spacey, but what makes Baby different is that due to a traumatic childhood experience, he has to listen to music pretty much 24/7. The movie cues us into this trait with a brilliant opening that shows Baby in a car dancing and singing along to "Bellbottoms" by The Spencer Blues Explosion while three others criminals are robbing a bank. The three flee out of the building into Baby's car, and a brilliant car chase all timed to the music ensues. After the high octane, fast cutting, and brilliantly constructed car chase concludes, Baby goes to get coffee and we are treated to one of the more fun and brilliant long takes in recent memory. Reminiscent of La La Land.

At this point of the film, about 20 minutes in, I thought I was discovering a new favorite film, but then it slowly began to fall apart. Baby falls for and meets a waiter named Deborah, played by Lily James. Baby wants to run away with her, and I became invested in this relationship and wanted to see more of these unique characters together, but instead we get sucked back into the criminal world for most of the rest of the film. Instead of watching Baby and Deborah take down the criminal enterprise, or at least avoid getting taken down by them in epic chases, Baby ends up driving for the criminals again. Despite captivating performances from the gang of criminals (and really how can you go wrong with Kevin Spacey, Jamie Fox, Jon Hamm, and Eiza Gonzalez) their characters are all rather simple and boring.

At this point, the film takes a significantly darker and bloodier turn. What started as an fun story about a unique character turns into a generic, yet overly complicated, revenge movie. What started as fun car chases timed to the music turns into bloody shootouts timed to music. No matter how ingenious it is to have machine gun fire in-time with the music, these scenes are far to violent to be fun, at least in my taste. We don't even get treated to epic and elegant final car chase. If the tone of the opening 20 minutes reminded me of La La Land, then the last 40 reminded me more of a film like Django Unchained.

Baby Driver has a lot of clever zippy dialogue, but the plot didn't go where I was interested in seeing it going, and none of the secondary characters had any depth. Details in the story got muddled, allegiances swap without much motivation, and the drawn out cliche of a man seeking revenge after his wife/girlfriend/mother dies is once again a key plot point. Despite the story and character flaws, Baby Driver has so much going for it. The entire cast is doing amazing work. Ansel Elgort is going to be a mega star. The music throughout is always Pitch Perfect. Director Edgar Wright is known for his heightened visual style, fast cutting, and brilliant scene transitions, and Baby Driver delivers on all the visual and auditory fronts. Maybe how much I loved these elements is what made the rest of the film feel so disappointing.

At least we still have this top-notch trailer to watch over and over again.

#BabyDriver #EdgarWright #David