It's summer movie season, which means the potential blockbusters are starting to come out in full force. Deciding which one or ones to spend your hard-earned money on can be quite a daunting experience, but there's one movie that is standing out among the remakes (Baywatch, Wonder Woman), the sequels (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Pirates 5), and the fantasy flicks (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword), and it is really unexpected.
Baby Driver is slated to be the movie of the summer. Don't believe us? Then just read the reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, where the film, starring the musically-inclined Ansel Elgort, has earned a 100% approval rating, making it Certified Fresh. And it hasn't even come out yet.
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The hype around the action-musical (yes — that is a thing and it is exhilarating to watch) reminds us of the build-up around the 2016 standout from a totally different genre: Jordan Peele's modern day horror movie, Get Out. The critical fandom around the socially relevant and cinematically compelling film had audiences rushing to the theaters to check out the fresh movie themselves. The initial positive response to the fast-paced film (it premiered in March at SXSW) even resulted in its release date being pushed up from August (a dud of a month when it comes to movie audiences) to June 28 (a bullseye for blockbusters).
#BabyDriverMovie has a new poster that matches its score on the ? #Tomatometer- ?% #Fresh https://t.co/I2I53F3yMk pic.twitter.com/fcE5C6qSWU
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) May 11, 2017
Now that I have convinced you to see a movie with a mini-Ryan Gosling as the lead, let me tell you a little more about the rest of the cast and the plot line itself.
Elgort plays Baby, a getaway car driver who is indebted to Doc (a perfectly menacing Kevin Spacey), a conman who sets up robberies around Atlanta with various crews of misfit criminals. Baby clearly isn't one of them, but he has to do what Doc says until they are on even terms (terms which Doc decides). Baby is always wearing shades and listening to music on some 2000s device, from an iPod nano to a huge white OG iPod, because he has a constant ringing in his ears from a car accident in his youth. Music is seamlessly integrated into all the car chases, drag racing, and pulse-racing fights scenes, in a way that is almost musical-esque. Jon Hamm is Buddy (a nice guy for being a criminal), and Jamie Foxx is Bats (a mean guy who is also a criminal), and Lily James is Baby's love interest, Deborah.
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It's like Drive, but funny. Or like Fast and Furious, with less muscles. There's action and gore and lots of "killer" tracks as the poster promises, so buckle in, and see it while it's fresh.