Baby Driver (available to rent now on amazon and iTunes) was among the most anticipated films of the summer, and was released to solid reviews and an enthusiastic box office, clearing $100 million domestically and over $200 million worldwide. It very much looks like a movie, with actors, dialogue, set pieces, and something like a story. But it’s really an extended series of music videos, loosely stitched together by some semblance of a plot, and if you took the music out you’d just have Bad Boys 6 featuring Jon Hamm.
The main character is a driver named Baby (Ansel Elgort), and he can really drive. When he was still little, he was in the back seat of his parents’ car when they were arguing and ended up slamming into the truck in front of them, killing his parents and somehow leading him to a life of boosting cars and driving them like a champion stunt driver – but he can only drive while listening to music, and he has an iPod and a playlist for each day of the week (or something like that). He stole the Wrong Guy’s car one day, and ended up driving for that guy, Doc (Kevin Spacey), to repay his debt. The movie lets us know after the first heist that Baby just has to do One More Job and he’s “square” with Doc, after which he intends to do something not illegal. He also meets a waitress, Debra (Lily James, looking adorable), and they improbably fall in love despite spending almost no time together, but of course Doc isn’t willing to just let his best driver go – and the next caper is the one that goes wrong.
That’s not to say that Baby Driver isn’t fun, because at many points, it is a blast. The car chases are fantastic. The script has some great lines and sight gags, often silly but frequently funny. The visual style throughout the film is arresting, no pun intended, especially during the first heist when Buddy, his wife Darling (Eiza González, wearing skintight clothes and not doing much else), and Griff move in tandem as they exit the car and approach the bank they’re about to rob. The scene opens the film and gives that music-video vibe that director/writer Edgar Wright just can’t maintain through the rest of the movie.
And boy is the rest of the movie a mess. The story is a lot of nothing, with plot conveniences strewn everywhere to keep it moving. The characters are mostly nothing; only Buddy has a hint of an interesting back story, and Hamm manages to turn the character into a credible antagonist. Elgort is solid as Baby, but not given a ton to do; the only scenes where the character shows a little depth are with his deaf, wheelchair-bound foster father, who unfortunately is more prop than anything else in the film. Doc is a parody of a caricature of a crime boss; Spacey’s performance here is indistinguishable from his work in those e-Trade commercials. The film really sputters out at the end, as if Wright couldn’t figure out how to end the story without killing everyone off, giving us a closing sequence that feels tacked on, incongruent, and very much like the end of some epic music video. Wright can certainly put together a good driving playlist, but he might have done better to ask someone else to help him write the story.
