A good, but incredibly over-rated film

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2012)

Plot: Ryan Gosling plays a nameless stunt car driver who leads a double life as a getaway driver. After meeting a woman named Irene, and her son Benicio, he begins to grow a bond for them. When Irene's husband is released from prison, Gosling must help him get money in order to pay off his debt to the mafia.
Review: I wanted to LOVE this movie, I had heard nothing, and I mean nothing but good things about this movie. And of all the reviews I've read and watched, 95% of them said the movie was a masterpiece, not just good, but a phenomenal film. It has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 8.1 on IMDb (Number 204 on IMDb's top 100.) So when I was done watching it, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.
Really my big problem was that I really didn't care for Ryan Gosling's character, at least near the beginning. I think the only reason I actually cared about weather he died or not was because he was helping out this family (which we will get to later). This movie is about an hour and a half, and the first half hour of this film is extremely boring. The first car chase wasn't that impressive because they really hadn't established anything except that we were watching robbers, so why should we be rooting for them? A lot of the characters I completely forgot were in the film, like the bald guy, seems he was the guy in both the strip club, and the diner when he, well, if you've seen the movie you know what happens to him. At times the movie seems kind of pretentious, like their trying way to hard to make it artsy. I swear there were several points in the movie where I though I paused the film, it seems the director told the actors to just not move a muscle for no reason. And for a movie called Drive their aren't many driving scenes.
Now let's get onto the good stuff, I LOVED, the family, I really cared about them, I thought I would hate the father who just got out of prison, but when we find out that he is basically being screwed by the mafia, I felt sorry for him. And Irene and Benicio are so likable that they make up for the main character's flaws. The acting is great, I wouldn't mind if this film won some acting awards. Despite some scenes being about nothing the direction and cinematography were great, no shaky cam. The two driving scenes that aren't the first one are pretty entertaining, and I actually gasped a few times. People die in this movie, and I actually felt kind of sad for them. And the gore effects are great, the elevator scene will make any gore hungry nut very happy. And the villains were pretty cool too, not amazing, but I was waiting for them to die.
Overall Drive is not an outstanding movie, at least not to me. Richard Roeper and Peter Travers named it the best movie of 2011. While it may be one of the better films I've seen, it didn't even make it into my top 10 favorites. I had more fun with Transformers, Final Destination and Rio, even if they are worse films. Drive is a good film, I did like it, but I didn't love it and I hope that everyone will respect my opinion.