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I was not looking forward to Baby Driver, because I haven’t especially cared for any other Edgar Wright movie I’ve ever seen. (Watching Scott Pilgrim in the theatre with a full house was actually one of the most depressing movie-going experiences of my life.) Fortunately, I would never have known Baby Driver is an Edgar Wright movie unless you told me. Because unlike Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, or Scott Pilgrim, I was engaged with the characters and engrossed in their predicament. And while the first 10 minutes of Baby Driver threatened to deliver a movie that was (like Pilgrim) all style over substance, Baby Driver delivered the goods soon enough.

The first ten minutes are a little bit annoying, all cut-cutty to music and a long tracking shot also choreographed to music. I was afraid I’d hate Baby Driver more than any Wright movie before it. Fortunately, Wright stops masturbating all over the audience as soon as the main character, named Baby (Ansel Elgort) meets up with Kevin Spacey. Spacey plays a heist planner who hires Baby to drive the getaway car for a revolving door of bank robbers that include Jon Hamm (Money Men) and Jamie Foxx. Baby is desperate to get out of this line of work, but he can’t until Spacey considers an old debt repaid. Meanwhile, Baby falls in love with a waitress (Lily James) and plans to drive off into the West with her as soon as he’s free. But when Spacey decides he doesn’t want to let Baby go, things get really complicated really fast. The last thirty or forty minutes of Baby Driver are pretty exciting, gripping stuff. Emotional, too.

Elgort is enigmatic and charismatic in the lead. His scenes with Lily James are the best in the movie. Rarely do ‘falling in love’ scenes play this well in a Hollywood movie. Elgort and James have a wonderful chemistry that just makes you want to smile and root for them. Spacey is doing what Spacey does best, and Foxx and Hamm are also put to great use playing dangerous threats to Baby’s hopes and dreams. Then there’s the soundtrack, one to kill all soundtracks that have come before it — an amazing and eclectic collection of songs that are the emotional glue that hold the movie together.

What can I say? It’s always great when a movie impresses you despite your expectations. Baby Driver is stylish, but it has substance to match. And Elgort and James are magic together.