Trailer showcases high potential, wasted in the actual film

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The trailer held great potential for this movie - smartly timed moves to energetic music, explosive car chase scenes, a budding romance.

The actual movie - worth one discounted movie ticket for viewing at the theaters at most.

Why?

You start off with a catchy title 'Baby DRIVER' - so you'd think you'll be seeing Fast & Furious-style chases and such throughout, just like the trailer teases. Yet, the latter 1/2 of the movie is filled with long, long scenes of Baby.... RUNNING?!?

Then, add on all the lost potential - You can easily sing away to the ending song of FF7, but here in Baby Driver, you can barely put together a La La Land-like soundtrack. It's a total scramble of odd songs from across genres that don't really fit together - more like the ramblings of the director's mind - and what you get is nothing that reaches as high as the very first bank robbery scene, which setup lots of anticipation for it's timed wipers, etc.

Tack on paper-thin characterization - the assembled 'team' is barely interesting versus the FF team. Unmotivated and silly scenes.

eg. Right, you go into a building to get weapons, hear a super long blab about port cuts, and only get offered 9 weapons?! And instead of picking the 'best', Jamie starts a shootout, picks up random weapons, and blows the rest up?!? So -stupid- versus FF, where the team is offered the best, and they build and take the best to offer the audience a truly awesome race/fight scene later on. In Baby, it's an aborted effort. Why offer the goods if you're just going to waste it all?

eg. So many scenes are merely Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk.... all in the MIDDLE of an exciting fight/chase/etc. scene. Why, oh, why wasn't all this cut??

And you end up with a miserable ending versus the 'enemy' at the end. Baby steals one car, crashes it into the bad guy's car. Then, Baby gets out, steals another in the parking lot, crashes it again into the bad guy's car. Then, gets out.... you get the idea. Just how fast can one kid get out of a car, break into another, jack it, and drive it into the bad guy?! So unbelievable.... not only for the changing of cars, but now it's become "Baby Car Crash" rather than "Baby Driver".

Spacey dies in an equally lame way in the end - simply shot dead. Not even uses the full potential of Baby here at all, who stands with his girl looking all stupid at the men coming to shoot him dead instead of 'Running' so well like he did earlier in the movie. Why, Baby, Why don't you RUN???? Because it's not a Driver movie anymore and you're facing death.

The movie does stick with you afterwards and you do wonder, what if the fullest potential of the idea had been written into the movie? Imagine if it had Top 10 hits, rocking cameos by top singers, FF-style car chases, an amazing team fighting to escape the cops, etc. Yes, it would have broken Wonder Woman records and become a cult legend.

Instead, Baby Driver slowly deflates after the first bank robbery and leaves everyone with a yawn at the end for the immature ending. (It's also unbelievable how the the girl is characterized - every girl I've talked to who watched it rolls her eyes at the unbelievable way she 'falls in love' all so suddenly.)

You're also left with the tapes. Such unbelievable potential, wasted. It could have had Spacey listen to the 'Mom' tape, setting up the reason he protects Baby in the end and his life changes, realizing the 'love' he once had, but nope. Nothing done with it that would have moved the viewers.

7/10 because it's unique enough to stick in your brain for a day or two after. Otherwise, I'd rank it lower for the fragmented plot, weak characterization of most of the characters, poor pacing, etc.