So I enjoyed this - it was a fun summertime diversion, full of cool music and things that go boom.
I liked the Cornetto Trilogy movies much more, though. Part of that is that those movies were mashups that combined unexpected genres to produce both comedy and insights. Before Shaun of the Dead, who knew that zombie movies and romantic comedies were about the same thing? Baby Driver has no such ambitions - it’s a straightforward crime movie. Kid falls in with a bad crowd, tries to get out after one last score, etc. No big genre twists here, and none aimed at.
(The music angle, while fun, is hardly new or unexpected in a crime movie; see every Marty Scorsese crime movie ever. Not to mention Michael Mann, etc. etc. The Harlem Shuffle scene was lovely, though.)
Another reason the Cornetto movies come out on top is that they were much better grounded. They took typical British blokes, played by skilled comic actors, and put them into utterly over-the-top situations. The appeal came from watching the real collide with the ridiculous. Baby Driver, by contrast, is set up as a typical Hollywood movie. Meaning that, while there are no zombies or cultists or killer robots, it takes place in an ungrounded nowhereverse* where run-of-the-mill bank robberies are planned like military operations by Kevin Spacey, people hang out in perfectly deco’d retro diners, the correct configuration of sporty red cars can be relied upon to appear exactly when required, and the villain at the end can be expected to enact exactly the sort of tropes Hot Fuzz lovingly mocked. The real can’t collide with the ridiculous because there’s no real to begin with.
I can’t help but wonder whether Wright gave up his beloved British milieu, and the Cornettos, angry swans, and pub fetish that goes with it, to get this movie made, just like I can’t help but wonder whether Spacey, Foxx, and Hamm were cast to put butts in seats, not because anyone thought they were were perfect fits for the roles. I mean, I like 'em all in other things, but they’re basically phoning it in here. And certainly the soundtrack to Baby’s life is more that of a middle-aged Englishman who grew up on northern soul and punk than that of a millennial Atlantan. (As a middle-aged American who likes the same music, this is not a complaint. But it did make me disbelieve in Baby.)
Part of me hopes that Wright gives up his quixotic attempts to make big-budget Hollywood movies with the attendant compromises and goes back to TV, where he can make use of all those skilled British comic actors and do his own thing. TV is where it’s at now, anyway.
- Well, Atlanta. But you just know the only reason it’s the setting of this movie is because filming there is cheap.
