Driving Lessons (2006)

Outline: Straight-laced mother Laura (Laura Linney) convinces her 17 year-old son Ben (Rupert Grint) to get a summer job. He takes a position as an assistant to Evie (Julie Walters), a former actress turned eccentric (don't they always?).

There's not much else to write up there without giving away all the plot points, but I will tell you that there is an affair and a road trip.

I've been reluctant to review this particular film as it is going to force me to say some things that I'd really rather not. Let's start with the good.

The good: Walters and Grint, of course. They have such a sweet and natural chemistry that it borders on miraculous when their lonely hearts find each other. Writer-director Jeremy Brock reportedly based the work on his own experience working for a Dame as a teenager. If Dame Peggy Ashcroft was anything like Evie Walton, he was lucky to have found her. Walters plays her as the kind of carefree spirit that only gets that way after a lifetime of losing that for which she cares the most, and it is hard not to get caught up in her spell as Ben does. Grint is also delightful as a young man struggling desperately against the apron strings.

Those strings, mind you, are more like a noose the way Brock has written Laura. I've long held that Linney is one of the best actress out there doing the work today, but, regardless of the accent or the blasé one-dimensionality of the character, Linney is awful in the role. I don't think it's that she's miscast because she did a similar take on suburban life and acting out a proscribed role to a much better effect in The Truman Show. Linney offers a reprehensible monster and no insight into why she needs to control Ben so desperately. I mean, what was with her always standing in the driveway waiting for him? Could she hear him shuffling along? And her final, undeserved comeuppance? What was the point, exactly?

Also, why was super-cute Bryony (Michelle Duncan) interested in Ben? Oh, you're not going to show us any of that? Thanks, Brock.

And finally, could Clive Carroll and John Renbourn have written a more ridiculous and cutesy "look at me with the piano and the hand-claps!" score? Don't get me wrong, I was initially swayed by its syncopated fun, but it wouldn't have killed them to vary the routine a little. After a while, it was grating and lent itself to negative comparisons to Tim DeLaughter's similar and superior Thumbsucker work.

Alright, small praise for Nicholas Farrell as Robert Marshall because he seemed like a nice enough guy trying to figure a way out of a bad situation, which is exactly what I thought the role should be. And nailing those tent pegs in at the end? That's parenting.

As one Bytowne mate succinctly put it, "cute but dumb." Indeed. C