Driving Lessons (2006)

More down-to-earth than Auntie Mame, Driving Lessons imparts the same simple, but enduring message—be yourself. In the directorial debut from screenwriter Jeremy Brock (Mrs. Brown), 17-year-old Ben (Harry Potter's Rupert Grint, sluggish yet sympathetic) lives with his vicar father, Robert (Nicholas Farrell), and pious mother, Laura (Laura Linney doing a passable, but inconsistent British accent), in a tree-shaded London suburb. Soft-spoken Ben writes poems and looks forward to passing his driver's test. When his mother encourages him to get a job, he becomes an assistant to retired actress Evie Walton (Billy Elliot's Julie Walters, hunched up to look elderly). He finds her overbearing at first. Still, Evie is preferable to Laura, who may do volunteer work with her husband's parishioners, including bizarre boarder Mr. Fincham (Jim Norton), but also cheats on him with Reverend Peter (Oliver Milburn) and engages her resentful son in the subterfuge. Then Evie tricks Ben into driving her to Edinburgh for a poetry reading, where he learns to assert himself and she learns to put the dramatics on hold—at least for a few minutes. Ben also loses his virginity to a woman he just met, sending a secondary message some parents might not appreciate (the film's sprinklings of profanity earned it a PG-13). Driving Lessons itself seems stranded between coming-of-age story and character study. Ironically, Farrell gives the most convincing performance as Ben's bird-loving father. Engaging if uneven, this parable about hypocrisy and self-expression might have been more interesting if presented from his perspective. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Driving Lessons (click for larger image)

Beyond Driving Lessons at Amazon.com

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The Films of Julie Walters

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What a pleasant surprise!

My husband and I had never heard of this film but it met our criteria for renting from the video store - not more than a couple of copies available to be checked out and winner of some rather different sounding awards. Man, were we pleased. Excellent performances by Rupert Grint and Julie Walters. January 4, 2009

JEREMY BROCK, OPUS 1

*** 2006. Written and directed by Jeremy Brock. London. Ben Marshall's father is a minister and his mother a woman more interested in the social activities of the parish than in Ben's life. So when Ben meets Evie Walton, an aging actress, he also finds in her an attentive friend who'll help him to become an adult. Nothing really original in this film but noteworthy performances by Laura Linney and, above all, by Julie Walters as the alcoholic Evie Walton. The satirical description of the domestic life of a religious British family is also funny at times. In short, DRIVING LESSONS is a coming of age movie worth a viewing. Not bad but already forgotten. September 7, 2008

Awkward, coming-of-age dramedy

I watched Driving Lessons, starring Rupert Grint, Laura Linney, and and Julie Walters, this week. Though it definitely had its maudlin/trite moments, it's worth seeing for Julie Walters' great performances and to take a look at what Grint can do minus his Hogwarts wand.

Grint plays Ben, a 17-ish young man with an overbearing mother (Linney, though it's not her best work). Ben's mom, a priest's wife, makes it her personal mission to take care of all the aged people in their neighborhood, and she enlists Ben's help in caring for them. She also demands a strict schedule of driving lessons (administered by herself, of course) so that Ben can earn his license (which has been, thus far, elusive). Finally, she suggests that Ben get a summer job so that he can contribute his income to helping another one of his mother's projects - an older man who accidentally ran over his wife and is now living with them until he "recovers."

In this suffocating environment, Ben takes a job as the assistant to an aging actress, Evie (Walters). Evie is the original free spirit, mixed with equal parts vanity, insecurity, short temper, and loneliness. The two are oddly compatible, and Ben soon begins learning all kinds of things about life from Evie's quick one-liners and current struggles.

Though I thought the script could have been a bit tighter, and I thought that Grint's character could have undergone more meaningful change, I liked this film. Walters is amazing in it, and she clearly anchors the whole production. (With a lesser actress in this role, the whole film would have come tumbling down.) Grint has the hunched, insecure, shy act down pat, but I longed to see more of a transformation in him during the course of the film. Also, I would like to see Grint eventually play a character more dramatically different from Ron Weasley. If he doesn't do so, and soon, he will be relegated to this character type for a while.

Worth watching for the one-liners and for Walters' performance. August 31, 2008

Better with the Coreys

I found it mysterious that they even call the movie DRIVING LESSONS, implying that young Rupert Grint's mission in life is to get his drivers license, and then they just sort of forget about his quest, so that by the end of the movie, you see him walking up a big hill and we argued about whether or not that means he failed in life or he succeeded? Did he discover that driving isn't so great? Or had he transcended his desires and was on to something new, courtesy of Dame Evey Walton (played by the irrepressible Julie Walters just as if Rosalind Russell had never essayed the part years ago, in AUNTIE MAME, and just as if elderly Ruth Gordon had never fallen in love with young Bud Cort years ago, in HAROLD AND MAUDE).

They should box up all of Julie Walters' scenes and use them to show young actors what unbridled scene-stealing is all about. Did she ever figure out it her character, Dame Evey Walton, is actually a dame or not, actually mad or not, actually dying or not, actually talented or not? Perhaps the screenplay and director dictated a fatal indecision about all these questions, in the name of keeping us guessing, but Walters' performance suffers because she doesn't have a bottom line, just a vicious need to surprise and outglow her competition. I used to think that Lily Tomlin singing with the black gospel choir in NASHVILLE was the last word in racialized exoticism, but Julie Walters makes Lily Tomlin seem like Mahalia Jackson.

As for Laura Linney's accent, it's pretty wild! Again, people used to laugh at Dick Van Dyke acting English in MARY POPPINS but she's got him beat, plus she's evil. English Christians are probably launching a blooming fatwa on Laura Linney as we speak. Sign me up, English Christians, Laura Linney is making you seem uptight, selfish, adulterous and ludicrous all in one go. July 30, 2008

Ben Behind the Wheel

Driving Lessons There are a whole bunch of Reviews here; not much else to write, except that the movie is marvelous and that Ben finally learns how to . . .

Buy the DVD!

K. Distler 5-16-o8

May 17, 2008

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