Review of Baby Driver (2017) by Elena R — 11 Jul 2017

As others on the site I was completely surprised with all the positive ratings after having watched this boring piece of work.

Will not make this review a long one. Baby Driver is a cross between La La Land for the male audience, and Drive for the female one, but has none of the excitement or the heart of either. Many scenes were so contrived they made me cringe. I could almost hear director cues (e.g. the Baby dancing his way to/from the coffee shop) - left, right, duck, keep marching; construction workers - look more surprised, hat tip, jump - cut! Sort of a tribute to old Hollywood musicals, and in some ways similar to LLL. Except La La Land also had a palatable chemistry between, and amazing acting by, the lead characters; none of it present in Baby Driver. In fact, every second scene has an invisible coaching presence of the director (goes with the "contrived" comment.).

To top it off, I did not give a hoot about a single character in the movie. John Hamm did a fine acting job, but was completely miscast. Jammie Fox's Bats made no sense; neither did Kevin Spacey's Doc - what with a sudden change of heart at the end. One could write it (and many other scenes) off as Wright's attempt to be cynical towards cliché Hollywood twists, except that would require a considerable skill and did not work AT ALL in the movie.

Oh, and Baby - I am sorry, but the guy is as plain and boring as a dry paint. Compare Gosling in Driver to Elgort in Baby Driver. Baby's eyes behind his glasses are empty and not in any meaningful way.

I can write on and on, but you get the picture. The movie is a half-baked thriller with half-baked main characters and half-baked romance. I would have walked out of the theater had I not hoped for some sort of redemption at the end (so many critics cannot be so wrong, can they?) Except it never came. Herd mentality at play?