The 2017 film "Baby Driver" takes place in a world of vivid colors and nonstop music, but all of the feebly-depicted characters are black and white and the chords the film attempts to hit end up sounding dissonant. Its director, Edgar Wright, seems to have lost his knack for comedy and instead resorts to a bunch of stale criminal lingo that sounds like he learned it by watching old episodes of "Starsky & Hutch."
Ansel Elgort plays Baby, a car thief with superhuman tinnitus powers who, as a teenager, inadvertently stole a vehicle loaded with thousands of dollars in drugs that was owned by an Atlanta kingpin. As a result, he's forced to become an indentured servant getaway driver for several years in order to pay for the cost of the stolen merchandise.
Lily James plays Debora, a singing waitress who works at a diner that Baby habitually frequents because his dead mother, a former singing waitress, used to work there. She instantly falls for Baby upon meeting him while he’s looking at the kids menu. Then, things continue to get real Oedipal real fast as she takes on a romantic role in his life as well as a quasi-maternal role.
Kevin Spacey plays Doc, an underworld boss who carefully organizes major heists in the Atlanta area out of his secret warehouse lair that’s smack dab in the middle of downtown and is frequented by so many criminals that there is no way that it wouldn’t be exposed. He also makes a big point of claiming that he assembles a different crew for each and every job, but then we see him recycle the same people almost immediately.
Jon Hamm and Eiza González play Buddy and Darling, a murderous and passionate pair who engage in high-stakes robbery to fuel their cocaine habits. It’s hard to determine what’s less believable, Jon Hamm as a hardened criminal or Eiza González casually firing two automatic weapons at the same time.
Jamie Foxx plays Bats, a trigger-happy buffoon who kills almost everyone he meets and is incapable of completing a sentence without inserting some sort of failed pun or nonsensical remark.
Join us as we discuss Jon Hamm's shady college past, how this movie instantly aged given Kevin Spacey's creepy dialogue, and how we blame J.J. Abrams for this overrated film getting made.
Tell us what you think by chatting with us (@filmsnuff) on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or by shooting us an email over at mailbag@filmsnuff.com.
This episode is sponsored by Cards Against Creativity.
Visit our website at https://www.filmsnuff.com.