One of the more overlooked films of the Farrelly Brothers’ oeuvre is “Outside Providence,” one of the few films they wrote, but didn’t direct themselves, instead handing it off to fellow Rhode Islander Michael Corrente, who retained the heart that was long in the Farrellys’ work if not the gross-out humor of films like “Kingpin” and “There’s Something About Mary.” It was always a curiosity what that earnest coming-of-age film might look like if the brothers had directed it themselves and “Driver’s Ed” seems to offer a glimpse with Bobby going solo for a knowingly formulaic road movie that benefits from the feeling that it’s coming from a real place, less outrageous than the Farrellys’ most famous films but a little more frisky and endearingly earnest than your typical teen comedy.
The teens in “Driver’s Ed” openly talk about anxiety medications and their parents’ therapy sessions in ways you would not have heard about in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but “Driver’s Ed” recalls a time when movies like “Road Trip” and “Euro Trip” were more regularly in multiplexes and could expect a healthy afterlife on cable, borrowing a familiar spine for a story as it follows a lovelorn young man who goes in pursuit of a girl he has unrealistic expectations of returning his affections. It’ll come to a surprise to the film’s lead Jeremy (Sam Nivola), but surely less so for an audience that it’s likely his true love is sitting right in the car with him as he commandeers the Kia Soul his high school uses for Driver’s Ed while the substitute teacher (Kumail Nanjiani) assigned to the class is off getting coffee. Yet it isn’t suspense but good company that Farrelly looks for in the ride and that’s how fellow students Evie (Sophie Telegadis), Aparna (Mohana Krishnan) and Yoshi (Adrian Laprete) end up going along with Jeremy as he looks to reconnect with his long-distance girlfriend Samantha (Lilah Pate), even though bailing would clearly make more sense than sticking with someone who might not yet know how to parallel park.
When “Road Trip” and “Euro Trip” themselves could come across as raunchy retreads of the Savage Steve Holland adventures “One Crazy Summer” and “Better Off Dead” from two decades earlier, it seems like every generation could use a movie like this and while writer Thomas Moffett doesn’t reinvent the wheel, a clearly defined road has its share of comforts as the quartet of unlicensed drivers take turns steering their way to Chapel Hill where Samantha is starting her freshman year in college, much to the chagrin of Nanjiani’s Mr. Rivers and the school’s Principal Fisher (Molly Shannon), who has little concern for the kids but would like to prevent a crash for the sake of her job security. It’s nice to see “Righteous Gemstones” standout Tim Baltz sent after them as a school security guard without the authority to make a proper apprehension, though he still has friends in the force that can help him out, though one of the film’s shrewder turns is having the teens dump their phones to make their whereabouts harder to track, resulting in the secondary effect of forcing them off the devices to actually engage with one another.
Although the F-word flies frequently, the film isn’t ever that crass, which might actually dissuade some of Farrelly’s longtime fans from seeing it and could promise with an R-rating more bawdiness than it actually delivers, but it does treat its audience, no matter what their age, like adults. Everything seems to be of a slightly higher standard than it needs to be for a freewheeling exercise like this with an appealing cast and good humor and although the characters try their best to avoid distractions, “Driver’s Ed” offers a nice one for those who have been starved of such comedies of professional polish of late.
“Driver’s Ed” will screen at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12th at 9:30 pm at Roy Thomson Hall and September 13th at 3 pm at the VISA Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre.