A group of teens steal their school’s driver’s ed car, to go on a road trip to help a high school senior track down his college-freshman girlfriend and win her back.
Chuck says:
With nary an original thought in its by-the-numbers screenplay, you’re likely to experience an extended bout of deja vu watching Bobby Farrelly’s Driver’s Ed. The “script” by Thomas Moffett is a collection of worn-out tropes and situations from a variety of teen comedies, none of them enhanced by pithy dialogue or innovative framing. What it does have going for it is its four lead characters, teenagers who are actually pleasant to be around brought to life by a quartet of actors, each with promising futures.
Sad sack Jeremy (Sam Nivola) is despondent, as his year-older girlfriend Samantha (Liliah Pete) has gone off to college while he finishes his senior year in high school. Sensing she is pulling away from him, while in his driver’s ed class he decides to visit her in an effort to salvage their relationship. Not only has he stolen the school’s car but he has three reluctant classmates along for the ride. Evie (Sophie Telegadis) is the smartest of the group, crushing hard on the oblivious Jeremy and repeatedly pointing out the wrongheadedness of this excursion. Aparna (Mohana Krishnan) is the most uptight, constantly worried about what others think of her, while Yoshi (Aidan Laprete) is the school’s low-key drug dealer, his deadpan demeanor hiding a great deal of pain.
Unexpected bonds and friendships are formed over the course of their journey, which contains more than its fair share of diversions. What makes if bearable are the sincere performances from the four leads, each not only possessing dramatic and comedic chops, but a sense of subtlety as well. Not once did I groan as each lamented their respective plights and actually came to hope each would find some degree of happiness. These characters that could have come off as stereotypes in lesser hands.
Molly Shannon as the school’s principal and Kumail Nanjiani as the world’s worst driver’s ed instructor supply occasional laughs and it’s to their credit they’re not just phoning it in. If nothing else, Farrelly keeps things moving along, the movie clocking in at under 100 minutes which is a big plus in this era of cinematic bloat.
In the end, “Driver’s Ed” isn’t necessarily a bad movie, it just simply can’t avoid being seen as an exercise in “been there, done that.”
