Rarely am I pleasantly surprised by a movie so when 7 of us borrowed the van on Saturday night (siblings, cousins and boyfriend with me as the driver) to wander aimlessly around Blockbuster I did not have high hopes. Luckily Disturbia had a waiting list of sadists wanting to rent it my sister had to resort to something else. She chose “Driving Lesson”, I thought solely because it starred Rupert Grint (Ron from the Harry Potter movies) and said as much.
It wasn’t terrible! In fact, it was good and one of the cleaner films available lately (except for a few swears, mostly British ones). The main character is a 17-year-old boy who hasn’t learned to speak up for himself and is over-protected by her outwardly pious, fundamental Christian mother. Hoping to teach enlist her son in her good works his mother encourages him to find a job in order to contribute some money to the boarder she had just taken on. He ends up acting as a personal assistant of sorts to an alcoholic, lonely, melodramatic former actress who teaches him how to have fun and gives him a safe place to express his poetic heart. I don’t advocate the killing of innocence but it was interesting and touching to watch the young character grow and “find himself” to use a terrible cliché.
In the end it had very little to do with actual driving lessons but I’ll let that pass.
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