Movie Reaction: Baby Driver

Formula: Drive ^ Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I wish I was an Edgar Wright fanboy. There's certain directors whose superfans seem like they are having a great time. Tarantino diehards get super-invigorated for everything he does. Kevin Smith had that going for a while. I'm pretty close to it with Christopher Nolan, I suppose. I like Wright, but I wouldn't say I'm a fanboy. I don't count down the days until his next film. I don't even think I've rewatched any of his films. And it's a limited filmography that we're talking about: just the Cornetto Trilogy and Scott Pilgrim unless you go back to his British TV days. Shaun of the Dead is good, albeit over-hyped. Hot Fuzz didn't leave a mark on me at the time, although I've heard an increasing number of people list that as their favorite of Wright's films more recently. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World brought in a new audience for Wright. I think the film is fine, but I'm mostly impressed by how great the cast is. The World's End is probably my favorite of his films, but it wasn't even my favorite examination of friendship taking place during an apocalypse that came out that year.

I was looking forward to Baby Driver being the movie that got me to fully buy in. The trailer is my favorite of the year so far and the reviews have been uniformly favorable. Basically, it looked like Drive, but fun. That turned out to be pretty accurate. Baby Driver tells the story of a driver named Baby (Ansel Elgort). He's always listening to music because a childhood accident caused there to be a hum in his ear he tries to drown out. He's a precision getaway driver repaying a debt he owes to Doc (Kevin Spacey). Doc rotates through thugs to run all sorts of heists but he always uses Baby as his driver. Baby falls for a diner waitress, Debora (Lily James), right as he finishes paying off his debt to Doc, hoping to leave that life behind. And, wouldn't you know it, he gets pulled in for one last job before he's really free. The plot is familiar. The execution is what gives the film life.

Edgar Wright shifts his love of music into overdrive with this one. Baby is always listening to music. So much so that the few moments when he doesn't have earbuds playing something are very uncomfortable for the audience. I believe Wright wrote the screenplay with the songs already chosen (a screenwriting 101 no-no thanks to the difficulty of getting all the rights) and it shows. Scenes are edited around the songs, not the other way around. This keeps the film lively throughout, although there is a bit of a burnout effect by the end. It's a lot.

Wright also has a lot of fun with the stunts. I've been complaining a lot about the awful geography of action sequences this summer, from Pirates 5 to Guardians 2 to Fate of the Furious. That is not a problem with Baby Driver. Scenes are carefully considered and easy to follow. He often goes wide on a number of shots to show off the precision of the sequence and clearly sets the players and placement in a location before something goes down.

The movie puts together a good cast. Spacey was born to play a role like Doc. Lily James is charming enough in a thin-by-design role (Is it just me, or does the British accent translate to a Southern accent easier than other American accents?). The collection of thugs (Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Bernthal, Flea, and Lanny Joon) are perfectly scuzzy, with a solid mix of them playing with and against type. CJ Jones has a nice role as Baby's deaf foster father. I like that they hired a deaf actor for the role too. I think Elgort is the only person I'm not sure about. Apparently, I've seen all but one of his movies, and I still don't know how I feel about him as an actor. He doesn't really fit in this movie, which is kind of the point. He's fine, this just isn't the right role to judge him with as a performer.

My biggest problem with the film is that it lost control of the story by the end. Early on, everything is very tight and considered. By the end, a number of thematic and story threads are ignored or over-simplified in order to fit in another or escalate an action sequence. Wright is normally so good at fitting an emotional core into whatever genre movie he's working on. It was surprising how thin and haphazard it was this time.

Baby Driver is up there with Wonder Woman as the best films this summer has offered so far. That's faint praise given the paltry selection so far and isn't likely to last long with a stacked July. It's Wright's most crowd-pleasing film to date and a two-hour dessert. If Wright can make this kind of popcorn action movie for "only" $34 million, what's the excuse for all these mediocre films with 5x the budget?

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend