A story where characters move to the rhythm of music, yet isn’t a musical or music video. It’s a concept I thoroughly love and enjoy creating short stories to the beat of whatever song I'm currently listening to (usually when I’m jogging or in the car). Movie trailers have had great success with such concept, yet the trailers’s feature lengths rarely contain the same rhythmic timing. Baby Driver, however, is one of those rarities.
Baby Driver puts the latter concept into play and, for the film's first half, it works really well. The protagonist Baby (Ansel Elgort) suffers from tinnitus and constantly listens to music to drown out the ringing. The character, in turn, becomes essentially one with the music, doing everything to the beats and rhythm including his job as a getaway driver. Baby goes so far as to carry multiple iPods to use for different days and moods (happy, sad, “pink and sparkling”) and records other character conversations to remix later into catchy tunes. Simple tasks such as going out for coffee become an engaging spectacle as Baby moves to the song. The film has a sense of tempo alongside Baby, as it too acts and moves to the current groove playing. The film’s comedy, editing and timing, likewise, work effectively in time with the music (with one humorous scene involving a grenade and the Tequila song). It’s Baby Driver’s harmonious symmetry that transforms its more standard scenes into creative, charming displays.
If there’s an issue with Baby Driver it’s that its second half loses a lot of appeal and creativity in exchange for an unnecessarily darker tone. The film and Baby become less in tune with the music and, as such, lose their captivating charm found in the first half—the second half becoming a more generic action-thriller. Nonetheless, Baby Driver manages to hold on with enough engaging features to avoid disappointment, most notably with its very enjoyable performances from both Ansel Elgort and Kevin Spacey (who plays Baby’s criminal boss Doc). I really wish Baby Driver had focused more on the complex relationship between Baby and Doc (rather than the romance) because it is an interesting dynamic that, to the end, is difficult to pinpoint where exactly their relationship stands.
