Please don't spend money on this.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Ben Marshall (Rupert Grint) delivers meals for the elderly on his bicycle. He's not a good driver and fails his test. Laura (Laura Linney) is his religious mother obsessed with charity work. She won't let him have a cell phone since it causes cancer. She's having an affair with Peter from the church. His mother urges Ben to earn money for the family and he answers an ad placed by Evie Walton (Julie Walters). Evie is a flamboyant former actress. Ben is the opposite. He writes sensitive poems for his crush Sarah (Tamsin Egerton) but she thinks it's weird.This coming-of-age adventure relies on the actors to deliver the familiar character types. Grint has a good awkwardness but his screen presence is still not at star level. Walters is a little too prickly. She needs more fun in addition to her wild bitter drunkenness. Linney delivers some wild jabs and one or two actually land the mark. This is mostly light quirky but it rarely truly gets hilarious.

There were certain parts and pieces in the movie "Driving Lessons" that I was not thrilled by, but overall, I did enjoy this movie. The parts of the movie that intrigued me the most were the excellent actors and actresses, the random humor, and the beautiful scenery. I also enjoyed the overall plot and idea of this movie. I really liked how perfectly each actor or actress matched his or her part. Rupert Grint did a wonderful job playing his character, Ben. I thought Grint fit the image of the "awkward teenager" and did a great job expressing how each awkward teenager feels about certain situations. For example, when Ben senses that something between his parents is not quite right, he shuts down and keeps to himself. I think this represents how most teenage boys are. Grint also showed his acting skills when Ben was sharing his love poem to Sara. He showed how boys this age are a little unsure of themselves and how to talk to girls. Laura Linney, who played Ben's mother, also did an exceptional job portraying the stereotypical "controlling mom". She did this by acting as if she controlled the house and everything that goes on in it. She bosses Ben around to do things for her, like helping out at the church and even getting her some groceries. She also shows this controlling mom figure by lying and shutting the door on Evie, the woman who Ben has been keeping company. I think Linney was a great choice for the unpleasant mother of Ben role. The random spurts of humor in "Driving Lessons" were another entertaining part that grabbed my attention. Evie, played by Julie Walters, is the somewhat kooky older lady that Ben keeps company. She plays the most humorous role in this film with her funny yet a little inappropriate comments. I think the director, Jeremy Brock, made a smart move when adding Evie's funny sayings throughout the movie. The humor was unusual and not similar to other comedy movies, which is why I enjoyed it. For example, when Evie swallowed the car key and told Ben "..the key will be back with us in the morning! I'm as regular as clock work." was humorous and grabbed my attention. Lastly, the overall idea and plot was something I liked throughout this movie. I loved the fact that they shot this film in England because it made the scenery like something I have never seen before. I also thought that the plot of the movie was very interesting and kept me wanting for more after each scene. I was very intrigued to see how Ben was going to be after taking care of Evie. I thought it was a good idea to incorporate the encounter of Evie and Laura, because they were the two opposites throughout the film. I also liked how Ben driving Evie everywhere related back to the beginning of the story, which was about his driving lessons.

Writer-director Jeremy Brock's British coming-of-age film about a quiet, self kept, son of a preacher and aggressively religious mother, Ben, is pushed into getting a summer job to help a man in need and found one as the assistant to an over the top older actress. Though the movie has times that expose the meaning of the film it is portrayed in what I found to be rather odd and somewhat creepy ways. The two were very lonely people who became best friends very quickly. Brock put the two in a few almost risky scenes together. One scene Evie (the actress) and Ben had went on a drive and Evie ,knowing Ben was not allowed, forced him to stay a couple nights and camp with her. They were shown in the tent and though there was no actual behavior shown, I felt that Evie wanted something more out of Ben. After the camping trip I expected what I feel is something most would and expected Bens' parents, mainly his very controlling and strict mother, to completely freak out but she did not meet my expectations. Bens' mother Laura throughout the film was a rather strange woman. Though she was a very religious woman she had a thing for the Jr. Preacher. I couldn't really understand what the importance was of that with the rest of the film. Bens' father was not a big part in the film. He was in some very key moments of the film but that was it. I didn't really understand the parental role of the film. The parents were not much of an influence to the film and I think that if they had been more like parents that the film would have been more understandable and also more efficient to get the message across. The whole film for me was very unrealistic from the way the characters where portrayed to the way both Ben and Evie became friends. I think Brock did a good job with showing his message in the movie but it did not show its self to me until the ending. Once the message was shown to me the whole film fell into place as far as why Evie had done what she did by taking Ben camping. I don't think Brock could have done a better job with the ending of this film.

The 2006 movie Driving Lessons, directed by Jeremy Brock, overall is decent. It's not one of my favorite movies by any means but the comedy aspects are good. Ben's mom controlled every aspect of his life but after he started working for her, he started to live life. Dame Evie gave Ben the push to be a great individual, while maintaining a small amount of comedy, and after he quit working for her he started college, moved out, and started working at a library. Some key comedy aspects are Ben's driving abilities, Dame Evie Waltens as the crazy old woman, and the actions of Mr. Fincham.His abilities to navigate the roadways are hysterical because he crashes the car when he is supposed to make an emergency stop when the instructor claps his hands. Dame Evie is also a main part of the comedy because she swears like a sailor, she swallowed the key to the car when they (her and Ben), the amount of wine she drinks and her requests when she is drunk. The best part of the movie, in my eyes, would be when Mr. Fincham runs over Laura (Ben's mom) at the end of the movie. She controlled Ben the entire time like he was her little hand puppet and he changed, between him getting fed up with the treatment and what the Dame was telling him, to become more "manly" and stood up for himself against his mom. One may think that the title reflects his driving abilities, however, it reflects that Ben is turning his life around. This is the best example to show that been was turning his life around to live a better, freer life. Even though the movie was decent, it had some life lessons and colorful symbolism. Starting with the symbolism, when his employer (Dame Evie) was telling Ben that "A week seems like a year, I count each moment as a blessing." Shortly after she said this to Ben, he looked up at the starry sky and saw the true beauty of the world and realized that he was taking a life changing adventure. He would not be the same after this trip.The theme was indirectly told and was stemmed from a lie, yet both of the symbolisms point to this theme as a possible strong theme. Dame Evie told Ben that she was dying from breast cancer and could die between a week and a year from now. She was depicting, by her actions, that you should live life to the fullest because you don't know how long you have left to live. He took this to heart and this was shown by the night looking at the stars, the first time he spent the night with a girl, and definitely was shown at the end of the movie when he talked to Evie for the last time telling her that he moved out of the house, got a good paying job and is going to school to be more than someone's foot and hand (his mother's).This was all construed together by the final song of the movie, "Auld Lang Syne". The basic meaning is that the past is the past and live for the future because it can be whatever you want it to be. That is also why it is the song millions chant at the New Year celebrations. The New Year acts like the start of a new life and he is starting this new life.