Driving Lessons

Well on Wednesday TA and I went to see Driving lessons, starring Julie Walters (Billy Elliot), Rupert Grint (Harry Potter) and Laura Linney (Love Actually). It was quite funny, although I felt a little slow at times, so I think I would give it a 3.5 out of 5.

The plot revolves around Ben Marshall (Grint), who's 17, and lives at home with his mother (Linney) and father. His father is a vicar, and Ben lives a very repressed life under his controlling mother, who happens to be having sex with a much younger vicar just down the road. She used Ben's driving lessons as a cover for her sexual encounters, and pours her heart and soul into a biblical play, in which Ben is a eucalyptus tree, and the hot young vicar is Jesus.

Ben's mother takes in an old male lodger, who happens to have killed his wife, and she thinks it would be a good idea if Ben got a summer job to be able to contribute some money towards the lodger's upkeep. (It's worth noting here, TA turned to me and said "I'd tell her to **** off!) Admittedly, so might I have, but there we go. Anyway, Ben gets a job looking after a retired actress, Evie (Walters), and Evie it turns out, likes camping.

Evie asks Ben to accompany her camping, but when Ben asks his mother she says no. So Evie cons Ben into taking her for a drive, and when they get to the campsite, Ben sets up the tent to complete the picture, where, upon his demand to leave, Evie swallows the car key, so they have to stay the night. (Yes, I know, an old Woman and a young boy in a tent, but I promise, there isn't anything sinister about it!) On the way back home the next day, Evie pretends to be dying of breast cancer, in a bid to convince Ben to drive her to Scotland for a poetry recital, which he begrudgingly does. While there he falls in love with the assistant of the poetry recital organiser, with whom he spends the night, and misses the recital, which upsets Evie, as she can only remember her words when Ben is there. They argue and fall out on the drive home, in which it comes out that a) Evie can't drive (so Ben is driving illegally), and b) that Evie had "lied about the fucking cancer!"

They make it back, but when Evie comes round to Ben's house to enquire about him, his mother turns Evie away saying Ben doesn't want anything to do with her anymore. Ben's mother lets it slip just before the religious play that Evie had been round looking for Ben, and Ben runs off stage half way through, speeding to Evie's house on a bicycle, and when he gets no reply (Evie is in a drunken stupor slumped over the table), he pedals back to resume his tree duties. Evie then bursts in at the moment of Jesus' resurrection, and plays the part of god, getting the audience into a happy clappy stupor, and leads Ben outside, only for the wife killing lodger to run over his mother, just after he announces she's been having sex with the hunky young vicar!

All in all it was a funny and enjoyable film, I just thought that the plot was thin and protracted. You have got to love Julie Walters (who more than makes up for Grint's lack of acting skills - which let's be honest are pretty lacking), and personally I think she deserves a knighthood. She is marvellous and hilarious in all the things I have seen her in.

JK