First and foremost, Baby Driver is a lot of fun

Rating: 8/10 (7 August 2017)

First and foremost, Baby Driver is a lot of fun. By now most people know that it's a series of music videos set to car chases turned into a feature length film which is a great idea and it's executed with aplomb.
The car chases are cool, nothing ground-breaking but they're visceral and real and again, fun. The music matches the scenes brilliantly for the most part. The opening chase set to Bellbottoms is perfect and so is Baby play-dancing down the street to the Harlem Shuffle. Sometimes the music feels a bit too on the nose. Would someone like Baby really only listen to music like this from the 60s and 70s, pretty obscure stuff? Just because his mom left him these iPods? He has no taste that he's formed on his own.
This feeling of affectation permeates a lot of this film. It's enjoyable enough that it doesn't matter that much but it does prevent the film from becoming more than its trappings. It can be a bit scatterbrained and meaningless. Not in a brilliant pure pulp kind of way either - make no mistake, this film like most of Wright's films, wants you to care about the characters and make a connection but it doesn't quite achieve that.
The story is pretty standard fare for a film like this. One last job, kid with a heart of gold mixed up with the wrong crowd, perfect girl waiting in the wings for him to get out. Ansel Elgort is alright. There's a lot being said that he isn't nearly charismatic enough for this role, and though I would agree, I also think that's part of his character - he's in over his head acting cool to stay sane.
The problem is that just enough of his backstory is filled in for the audience to feel that it isn't quite right. His parents died in a wreck, so he became a badass driver - presumably to overcome his fear of car accidents - then became a bad kid with a lot of emotional problems. Somewhere in here a deaf man adopts him (did Baby know sign language before this? why would he? is this even allowed?) and Baby gets involved with Doc against his will (though based on the fact that he was stealing at the time, you think this would be a win win?) and then sometime later he becomes a good kid again who can't look away from the violence he's helping create. It all has the feeling of plot set-up exposition and may have been better left unexplained.
Everyone in this is like a comic book character, it's built into their nicknames and their personalities but Bats is the one character grounded in reality and Jamie Foxx imbibes him with the kind of gravitas this movie needed more of - he's great enough that it feels special (that speech about Hamm being a wall street guy who ran away with his stripper is good enough to have thematic weight but not indulged enough for pulp) but there's not enough of his impact for it to hit all the way home. Bats won't let Baby escape into his music and forget about reality - but it could also just be that his character is plot to motivate Baby into finally making a change.
Debra literally exists as a figment of Baby's imagination (at least she could be). A girl her age, with her temperament, would not be starting some dive diner waitress job with no boyfriend or outside life to speak of. All we know is that she has a mom she took care of, but then what? She's a plot cipher too involved for that to work as is. Dialogue between her and Baby has a crisp pulp feel to it but it doesn't quite work because the film can't quite decide if it should be taken seriously or not.
The ending is up for debate and I read some interviews with the cast that say it's only in Baby's head. This isn't that kind of bleak nihilistic movie so I took the ending at face value. And as for Baby's hearing it's impossible to tell what happened. It seemed like a big deal but fades out of mind almost instantly.