Baby Driver: 'Music-fuelled' caper strikes the right note

Crime comedy Baby Driver has been causing a buzz since it premiered earlier this year, with critics praising the inventiveness of this soundtrack-driven caper.

The heist-movie-with-a-twist, which opens in the UK this week, is the brainchild of Edgar Wright, the writer-director behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars) plays Baby, a young getaway driver forced to work for a criminal mastermind (Kevin Spacey) to pay off a debt.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Baby's quirk is that he relies on the beat of music in order to drive and function in general. Cue a rocking soundtrack, featuring everything from The Damned's Neat, Neat, Neat and T Rex's Debora, to Danger Mouse's Chase Me.

The buzz started at the film's world premiere at SXSW in March. Eric Kohn on Indiewire called it a "wildly romantic heist comedy" with "this year's best soundtrack".

As with Shaun of the Dead, said the critic, Wright had taken a "ludicrous concept" and turned it into "a brilliant exercise in high style and a rush of big ideas". But the film doesn't just have a good soundtrack: it is propelled from scene to scene by the music "into a realm that develops its own satisfying beat", argued Kohn.

"If Busby Berkeley made Grand Theft Auto, it might look something like this."

Since then, the film has gathered momentum.

Matt Goldberg on Collider writes that Baby Driver is basically a musical, saying: "Everything is soundtrack, everything is music, and it all combines into an experience unlike anything you’ve seen before.

However, the "sound and music" plays a key role in the emotions of the story and the "timing and choreography to pull off this kind of filmmaking is rare".

James Mulkerrins in the Daily Telegraph agrees that Baby Driver is a "fresh, funny spin on the classic heist flick" and while it feels like a musical, it is "mercifully free of the earnestness" of La La Land.

It is a homage to classic 1990s heist films Heat, Point Break and Reservoir Dogs, he adds, but "there’s also the sweet, budding romance" between Baby and Debora (Lily James).

The film is destined to become "the soundtrack of the summer".

Peter Debruge in Variety is also impressed, saying Baby Driver is "a blast" with "a surfeit of inspired ideas".

But the critic cautions the film is also "something of a mess, blaring pop tunes of every sort as it lurches between rip-roaring car chases, colourful pre-caper banter, and a twee young-love subplot".

Nevertheless, Debruge predicts it will resonate with audiences who are "young, hip" and "more than a little obsessive".