Educating Rupert
In Driving Lessons, Rupert Grint becomes the first of the young cast members of the Harry Potter series to star in his own movie. And his co-star, Julie Walters, is also from that series – she plays Molly Weasley, the mother of his character, Ron Weasley.
Walters is a veteran of British movies and once came close to winning an Oscar opposite Michael Caine in Educating Rita. Here she plays a hard-drinking, eccentric, ageing actress, Evie Walton, who hires 17-year-old Ben (Grint) to help her out over the summer holidays. Her over-the-top performance is the best reason for seeing Driving Lessons.
Ben’s parents are earnest Christians. Dad is the local Anglican minister, sincere but ineffectual. Ben’s domineering mother – a bizarre bit of casting for the usually reliable Laura Linney – is a pious hypocrite. She insists on teaching Ben to drive herself, but the lessons are a pretext for her adulterous meetings with a handsome young member of her husband’s congregation. Ben doesn’t dare protest, and Evie has to trick him into defying his mother and driving her to Edinburgh to perform at a literary festival – despite the fact he has no driving licence.
For about half of the movie, their road trip follows the standard odd couple scenario: their different personalities turn out to be not so different after all, and predictably they bond as friends, thankfully without too much sentimentality. She regains her confidence as a performer; he gets laid by a likely Scottish lass and gains the confidence to stand up to his mother.
None of this is very believable, yet writer-director Jeremy Brock apparently based the plot on his own experience as a 17-year-old working for Dame Peggy Ashcroft.
It’s the movie’s general lack of believability that lets it down – that climax is merely the last straw. The road trip is especially lacking in realistic detail. You keep wondering if anyone ever goes to the toilet or takes a shower – Evie might have known they were going to be driving to Scotland but what about a change of undies for Ben? The end result is a mildly amusing if formulaic British comedy, an amiable crowd-pleaser but hardly earth-shattering.
