Baby Driver

Once in every generation, a movie comes along that sets a new standard for storytelling in film. A movie with a plot so airtight that you could seal your phone in it on a scuba diving trip. A movie where every setup has a payoff, including the ones that you didn't know were setups. A movie whose story is familiar enough to feel comfortable but still unpredictable enough to be exciting.

Baby Driver is not that movie. 

For our generation, Die Hard is that movie, and how dare you think that any film could unseat it from its throne.

But where Die Hard gets an A+ in substance (and I shall not be moved on that point, yippee-ki-yay to you all), Baby Driver leads its category in style. If you need a brilliant plot with developed and surprising characters, head over to the MCU or check out this little indie film called The Godfather. But if that's not something you need from a movie with amazing visuals and fantastic music, get thee to Baby Driver.

As the title implies, Baby Driver is the story of a kid (young adult) named Baby who is the best getaway driver in the biz. Because of his tinnitus, Baby listens to music while he drives. Even criminals who are critical of his methods can't deny his skill. But Baby's in love, so he's ready to live an honest life. But only after he finishes this One. Last. Heist.

Let me explain why I saw this one on opening day.

A reliable comedy filmmaker is hard to find. You either have to be willing to venture into the adult-men-will-be-boys (potty humor division) world of Adam McKay, the adult-men-will-be-boys (sex jokes division) world of Judd Apatow, or the lady-power-genre-mashup world of Paul Feig (a great option despite varying levels of quality, from the near-perfect Spy to the man-I-wish-it-had-been-funnier Ghostbusters). Obviously, there are excellent indie comedies out there (The Big Sick, What We Do in the Shadows) and great action comedy directors (Shane Black, Martin McDonagh). Despite forays into serious bummerdom (lighten up, Llewyn Davis), the Coen Brothers haven't gone anywhere. Lord and Miller are great when you can get 'em (no mo Solo tho). Even The Lonely Island still puts out a movie every eight years! But for the most part, I struggle to find a writer/director who I can rely on to make me laugh with jokes. Remember jokes? Situational, clever jokes that don't rely on shocking you to get a laugh?

Enter writer/director Edgar Wright.

Edgar Wright has made four spectacular comedies since 2004: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. These movies are beautiful, complex, clever, and funny. Hot Fuzz is especially joke-dense, with Die-Hard-style long-game setups and payoffs (but instead of plot points, they're jokes and punchlines). Here's my favorite non-spoiler joke from Hot Fuzz, an exchange between a cop and a clearly underage kid in a pub:

Since being introduced to Edgar Wright (thank you Seth Hafer), I've trusted him implicitly. I knew Baby Driver wasn't going to be a comedy, but I never doubted my guy Edgar's eye for detail and his dedication to film.

And let me tell you: Edgar Wright knows movies. Before Baby Driver, the Alamo Drafthouse showed clips of Edgar Wright listing some of his film favorites. Not favorite films, mind you, but favorite car crashes, favorite chase scenes, and favorite chase scene songs from films. You think I know about movies? My guy Edgar has forgotten more than I will ever know. Every one of his movies so far has been a genre comedy (with the exception of the present case), and you can't watch them without seeing how much he loves the genre he's comedying. 

Likewise, you can't watch Baby Driver without seeing how much my guy Edgar loves the genre he's making a genuine entry into. As Mindy Kaling says, "I love effort. Effortless is for Tom Ford and maybe like two other people. No one else can pull it off, so just show you cared." I love to see a person who works really hard succeed, and I think that few people work harder than Edgar Wright. In this car chase film, my guy Edgar strapped himself to the front of the car in order to get the best shots.

That effort shows, in a good way. Every car chase in Baby Driver is technically and visually spectacular. His long tracking shots (which longtime fans will recognize from Shaun of the Dead) have been upgraded into musical numbers. Every background paints a picture. And he's got some of the best actors out there—Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, Djamie Foxx—playing it up big. It is impossible not to get swept away by the visual elements of this movie.

The musical elements of this movie really push it over the edge into greatness for me. My favorite podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour, noted how the "early 90s slickster garage rock" feels like nothing else, despite not being made up of original songs. Woven into this slickster score are the sounds of heist movies—gunshots & bags being tossed—and car movies—closing car doors, slamming trunks, and that familiar but scarcely noted sound that the car makes when you get out of the car but leave the key in it. It's all a part of Edgar Wright's sound scheme, and it makes Baby Driver almost feel like a musical or look like a ballet.

Adding to that feeling is the lithe grooviness of a person in whom I had zero faith before this movie. I'm talking about the man with the name crafted from two Scrabble draws: Ansel Elgort. He's a guy who was exactly okay in The Fault in Our Stars, slightly less than good in the Divergent series, and if I've seen him in anything else, I can't remember it. Edgar Wright has spent much of his career directing Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of whom are magnetic to watch. I worried that Ansel Elgort (whose name is an anagram for Gentle Solar) would be a boring protagonist at the center of a fascinating film. 

Luckily, Edgar Wright is magic. Just as he played all the right notes on the pale comedy keyboard of Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim, my guy Edgar knew how to get a star performance out of Ansel. His resting brood-face becomes the tragedy mask for a guy who's conflicted, shy, and stuck. It also makes it even funnier when he bursts into one of his many delightful lip sync numbers. His lanky build makes him look like a dancer, both in chase scenes and when he's actually dancing. What looks like blankness under lesser filmmakers is a canvas for my guy Edgar.

But even though I loved this movie, there was one bad bit that almost spoiled the stew. For this one, I'll refer back to my favorite podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour. The Baby Driver review episode featured NPR Pop Culture's Linda Holmes and NPR Music's Stephen Thompson, as well as two of my other favorites: Sam Sanders (a fellow Texan formerly of NPR Politics and now of his great new podcast It's Been a Minute) and Gene Demby (of NPR's race/culture podcast Code Switch).

Sam kicked it off. "I never say these kinds of things in movies," Sam said, "but I was just kind of like, 'Huh. That kid could be black.'"

Host Linda Holmes chimed in: "Not even just could, but maybe should?"

"Should," Gene agreed.

Sam goes on to list his reasons: the film is set in Atlanta, Baby has a black foster father, he's really into old-school R&B. Sam emphasizes that it didn't make him like the movie any less; he just noticed it. 

Gene digs in deeper: "Had they made him black, it would have been a different movie." He's right. If Baby were black (Linda proposes Donald Glover, making both Gene and I "ooh" out loud), this movie would have a different tone (possibly lighter) and different stakes (definitely heavier). Linda goes on to say that things probably would have worked out much differently for Baby in the end.

*** SPOILERS START HERE ***

What she's talking about happens when the imperfect story has backed itself into a corner. Baby ends up getting caught and put on trial for his various crimes, which by that point include manslaughter/murder. His trial scene is a parade of familiar characters praising the virtues that, to be fair, we have seen in Baby up to that point. But ultimately, it's still pretty cringeworthy that Baby kills a black man and gets like five years for it, and emerges from jail still in the flower of his youth with a literal rainbow behind him.

The testimony in Baby's case echoes a narrative we hear on the news a lot: "he was such a good kid, he volunteered at the animal shelter, she made straight As, she was always kind to me, this kid couldn't do anything truly bad." But it feels like the reasons we hear someone vouch for a kid are racially split. For white kids, we often hear how good they are because they did some sort of crime that the voucher is trying to tell us is out of the kid's character (think of Brock Turner, the Stanford "Swimmer"/Rapist). For black kids, we often hear how good they are because they've been shot by police and the voucher is trying to tell us that they didn't deserve to die (Jordan Edwards was a straight-A student and football star, Cameron Tillman had a 3.7 GPA, Tamir Rice was a gentle kid with a sincere faith in the Catholic church).

Both arguments are incorrect. Brock Turner raped someone, so yeah, turns out it was in his character to rape. We are what we do. And no kid deserves to be shot by police without due process of law. That's not me talking. That's James Madison. Our Bill of Rights says even the worst citizen deserves their day in court, if at all possible. You don't have to be a pillar of your community to deserve to survive an encounter with police; you just have to be a person.

Sure, it's nice that things work out for Baby. I love Baby! I'm glad he gets out. I'm obviously not arguing against mercy in sentencing (hi I'm Emily). But it's frustrating and pretty tone-deaf to see Ansel-Elgort-as-Baby's life turn out just fine when you know that Donald-Glover-as-Baby's life would be all but over. 

If I had to pick Edgar Wright's blind spot, it would probably be race. His movies are overwhelmingly white. Rewatching Scott Pilgrim in May, I was astonished that the single non-white male character's big scene was a stereotypical Bollywood dance number. Yikes. (Self-awareness corner: the fact that I didn't remember that scene at all shows you how far I still have to go in the pursuit of actual wokeness, which is a lifelong moving finish line.) Edgar Wright is still a great filmmaker. Of course he is. But this is one area in which I'd really like to see him grow.

*** SPOILERS END HERE ***

Stray thoughts: Lily James is so dang cute, if a little underdeveloped. Pay attention to the lines said on TV when Baby is flipping channels early on, and keep an ear out throughout the rest of the movie. Actually, just go to the IMDb trivia page for this movie right after you see it. It's great. I have lots and lots of thoughts about the way this movie signals who its villains will be as compared to the way that Colossal signaled villains (#futurepostmaterial?). Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright are both killing it so hard right now and I couldn't be happier for them.

Basically, I enjoyed this movie as much with my brain as I did with my gut. My faith in Edgar Wright persists. Even though it's flawed, Emily likes Baby Driver. And will probably see it again.