OVP: Baby Driver (2017)

Film: Baby Driver (2017)
Stars: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx
Director: Edgar Wright
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Seven years ago, I had one of the more surprising moments of my cinematic life when I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  Up until that point I had never seen one of the films of Edgar Wright, and only knew him by his trailers, none of which particularly interested me.  Michael Cera had at that point become something of a movie star, so it wasn't surprising to see him headlining a comedy for the summer, but like Jonah Hill & Seth Rogen, names I associated with him, he wasn't a calling card for me.  Still, the reviews were quite strong for the picture, and the movie I was supposed to see was sold out, so I thought "let's give this a shot, shall we, as I'm already here?" and so I went in and saw the movie, and I LOVED IT.  I have seen Scott Pilgrim more times than probably any film from 2010, including The Social Network, and I can quote most of the lines.  I was so hooked that I was surprised when Edgar Wright suddenly became less prolific, and didn't make another movie that seemed to capture that quick-witted, visual-flare style of Scott Pilgrim again (perhaps it was due to the Box Office not loving the picture as much as I did).  So when Baby Driver's trailers invited me back looking like they'd been torn out of the same page book as Scott Pilgrim, it didn't take any coaxing for me to be in the theaters.  I was there opening weekend.

(Spoilers Ahead) Inevitably Baby Driver was not going to be Scott Pilgrim, if in part because it wasn't going to be a discovery, but man did I like it anyway.  The movie centers on a getaway driver named Baby (Elgort, perhaps the only actor working who could pull off that moniker), who is about to undertake a heist with a motley crew made up of Buddy (Hamm), his wife Darling (Gonzalez), Bats (Foxx), and Doc (Spacey), the leader of the group.  Like all good crime movies, we see a successful heist to kickoff the picture, and then it unfolds into a series of deadly mistakes, which lead Baby to rebel against the crew as he wants to get out and start a new life with a young waitress named Debora (James).  The film unfurls with multiple characters dying in the process, and a lovely, happy ending akin to Scott Pilgrim as the picture unfolds.

The fun of Scott Pilgrim was that, even at its most ridiculous (how is it that Ramona Flowers has so many evil exes that have superpowers?), was that the lines were snappy and the characters were heartily felt, and certainly the script here delivers.  While there was nothing quite as remarkable as "Julie Powers Has Issues" (I still do a spit take), these are all actors with clearly fine comic timing, give or take Lily James (who isn't really asked to be funny), and some of the visual bits, like anything surrounding Baby's name or his relationship with the deaf man he lives with, feel plum and full of movie positivity.  Honestly-one of the rare things about the first half of Baby Driver might be it's so joyfully in love with its main character, and I liked that.  After seeing him now in a couple of movies, I'm still not entirely sure about how extensive Ansel Elgort's skills are as an actor, but he's nearly impossible not to enjoy watching, and not just because of that exaggeratedly handsome mug of his.  He has to be one of the most charming figures to come to the movies in a long while, and he is exactly right for this part as Baby.  The film lives or dies based on his work, keeping the movie and intrigue about his character steady, and he does that with aplomb.  I genuinely don't know where his career will take him, but between this and his similarly well-cast work in The Fault in Our Stars, he's at least quite fine at picking out scripts.

The movie derails a bit in terms of its fun in the final third of the film, when it borrows perhaps too liberally from Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, and both Kevin Spacey & Jon Hamm see their characters go in too extreme of directions.  Spacey, while an actor with fine comic timing, doesn't really have a read on a character whose motives are hard to suss out unless you want to start projecting some sort of homosexual love that he has for Baby, and Hamm can't seem to ground his character's dramatics enough toward the end of the movie, making him (in my opinion) the weakest link in the picture, which was not an opinion frequently shared by other critics.  Honestly, for all of the criticism that January Jones gets for being a limited actor, aside from spoofing his handsome-man persona on 30 Rock, has Jon Hamm ever done anything approaching the gift he exhibited in 30 Rock?

That said, for the first half, and occasionally in the second, this is a delight to behold.  Wright combines fun, energy, and wit (both visual and aural) so well onscreen that even when he gets a little bloated or overly confident, it's hard not to dismiss that while you're enjoying your time in the theater.  If you haven't yet, catch this (or Scott Pilgrim), as it's now available on DVD.  And share your thoughts on the picture below!