CommonSpace film critic Scott Wilson takes a look at the big movies of the moment
FAST CARS, middle-of-the-road romance and scrapheap storytelling make for a varied week.
Baby Driver – ★★★★☆
It’s been four years since Edgar Wright’s The World’s End, having since been attached to and subsequently dropped from Marvel’s Ant-Man. Baby Driver has been in his head since the 1990s, always knowing it would be an American film unlike his Simon Pegg and Nick Frost-starring Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy.
Those films showed Wright is a meticulous filmmaker with their attention to detail, in everything from plot foreshadowing to background gags. Four years isn’t very long, but it’s easy to forget how watchable Wright’s movies are – Hot Fuzz isn’t played relentlessly on ITV2 because it’s inaccessible.
With Baby Driver the laughs don’t come as often, but that meticulousness is still everywhere, particularly in the connection between audio and visual.
The lead character, Baby, played by Ansel Elgort, suffers from tinnitus and so plays music to drown it out. Every major movement he makes is done to the rhythm of the beat, whether that’s in a La La Land-like stroll through the streets or while working as a getaway driver, employed by Kevin Spacey’s Doc.
Like Grand Theft Auto crossed with the aforementioned La La Land, it’s a film that captures the excitement of car chases, the romantic attraction to a life of crime, and the starry-eyed innocence of love.
Sick of the criminal way of living, Baby is happy to know he’s paid off his debt to Doc, and happens upon Lily James’s Debora in a diner, a working woman who dreams of driving west and leaving it all behind. Baby shares her dream, but the lives of criminals are never simple.
Like Grand Theft Auto crossed with the aforementioned La La Land, it’s a film that captures the excitement of car chases, the romantic attraction to a life of crime, and the starry-eyed innocence of love. It’s expertly crafted, everything timed to whatever’s playing on Baby’s iPod, making it a sensory delight while also serving the character and his need for music to drown out the constant ringing in his ears.
Comparisons highlight its weak spots – Doc’s Monsters Inc joke is so funny that Wright’s knack for writing comedy is missed. His characters are always likable but they never needed depth the way they do here, and Debora suffers from a lack of attention.
But, it’s so fun, so kinetic and so watchable that its lulls never hinder your first thought upon its ending being an immediate desire to start it off all over again.
Hampstead – ★★☆☆☆
Romcoms are known for their beautiful leads and beautiful locations, all toothy and sunny. It’s a young person’s game about first forays into love and how one person coming along can change everything.
Hampstead jumps forward a few decades. At 71 and 62 respectively, Diane Keaton and Brendan Gleeson lead a story of love later in life, and despite its many faults, right from the off it has an air of being well-meaning.
Keaton’s Emily is an American widow, losing money and looking for a cause she believes in. Gleeson’s Donald lives in a home he built – derogatorily referred to as “a shack” – on Hampstead Heath.
Hampstead is one of the most expensive places to live in the country, so the land Donald lives on is worth a few quid. Along come the men in suits to hand him an eviction notice, and along comes a cause for Emily.
In trying to make something that is driven by a political plot with a significant romantic element, it sacrifices both, lowering the stakes and softening the impact.
Having been inspired by a true story, that Hampstead dilutes the tension between wealthy property developers and Karl Marx-supporting Donald is to its detriment. The 21st century David vs Goliath is the everyman vs the elite, and in Harry Hallowes they had a perfect story.
It’s squandered on the romantic elements which detract from what could be an easily-won feel-good story. Emily is an irritating hippy, the kind of person Donald gives off the impression he would hate. Their coming together is rarely believable, and it skips the beats that romcoms emphasise like first kisses.
In trying to make something that is driven by a political plot with a significant romantic element, it sacrifices both, lowering the stakes and softening the impact. It’s delightfully inoffensive, perfect for Sunday afternoon viewing, and that it lets older people fall in love too is commendable. It just could have been more.
The Book of Henry – ★★☆☆☆
Colin Trevorrow is at it again. Having directed the dreadful Jurassic World and made $1.672bn dollars at the box office, he’s here to swindle us again with the utterly absurd The Book of Henry.
Having received some of the worst reviews of 2017 so far, it’s tempting to go in to The Book of Henry with your pitchforks sharpened and your red pen at the ready. It’s comforting to find that it isn’t boring, but enthrallment comes from its bizarre plot, strange characters and left-field tonal shifts rather than anything to celebrate.
Young Henry is a genius attending a normal school, while his mother, played by Naomi Watts, is useless. Henry takes care of the bills while Watts’s Susan plays videogames and gets drunk with her friend Shiela, played by Sarah Silverman.
Henry begins to suspect the girl next door is being abused by her stepdad and tries in vain to catch him in the act. After exhausting all possibilities, he writes instructions on how to successfully carry out an assassination of the stepdad.
In attempting to make a film, Trevorrow has stitched together ideas that, when treated as a whole, make for something at best endearingly confusing, but at worst a bit creepy.
Along the way there are extended passages of grief involving Jacob Tremblay of Room fame, here playing Henry’s little brother, Peter, and looking very sad indeed. Its entire second act forgets about the girl next door and goes down another path entirely, only to remember what happened before this random deviation and get back to the original plot.
It’s haphazard and disorientating. In attempting to make a film, Trevorrow has stitched together ideas that, when treated as a whole, make for something at best endearingly confusing, but at worst a bit creepy. Silverman’s Shiela kisses Henry on the lips in a way that makes for uncomfortable viewing, and with no real explanation as to why. They have a relationship built on faux-adversarial banter, the type of which could lead to sexual tension elsewhere, but that fails to explain the decision to sign off on such a weird decision.
Those tonal flaws are what’s led to The Book of Henry’s notoriety – it’s certainly not boring, but in its failings it contains some obvious misjudgements. It’s enjoyable in the way bad films often are, with an extra dose of bonkers on top.
After Jurassic World and now this, it’s frightening to remember – Trevorrow’s next film is Star Wars Episode IX.
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