Is there a vehicle that has greater metaphorical potential than the car? “Hitting the brakes” on something, making a “pit stop,” bracing for a “fork in the road,” living life on “cruise control” … cars are a potent way to orient ourselves in the world and each other. Road trip movies are one of the great American exports, and it feels like there’s no better synergy with them than the coming-of-age story. Director Bobby Farrelly’s “Driver’s Ed” may not reinvent the wheel, but by playing squarely to its middle-of-the-road strengths with a young cast clearly aware of the type of movie they’re in (it embodies the spirit of those early 2000s “friends hang out and go on an adventure” films), it’s still a trip worth taking.
If there were a metaphor to describe the state of Jeremy (Sam Nivola), “roadblock” might be the most apt. The high school senior and burgeoning filmmaker brims with self-confidence, replete with a Wes Anderon-inspired jacket, in all areas except one: his relationship with his girlfriend, Samantha (Lilah Pate), who has gone off to college without him. Nivola captures the free-spirited front that youth so desperately try to put on while crashing out on the inside.
You can see the nervousness about this new dynamic and the insecurity flash across his eyes whenever he hears of another male friend Samantha interacts with. Samantha ghosts Jeremy one too many times for this Find Your Friends aficionado’s liking; determined to mend their relationship, he steals a car during a driver’s ed lesson, with a coterie of friends and the instructor, Mr. Rivers (Kumail Nanjiani), in tow. Principal Fisher (Molly Shannon) and a security guard, Officer Walsh (Tim Balz), round out the other horsemen of the apocalypse tasked with catching these vehicular delinquents.
It’s a straightforward and charming premise, one that is very much about the destination and not the journey. There are times where the film threatens to run out of gas; there are only so many obstacles you can throw at this crew to keep it in the realm of believability (a random aside with a gunman is an example of going off the beaten path that also happens to jump the shark). Jeremy’s friends are outlined enough to make them distinct, but the details we get seem strategically doled out in service of the plot instead of feeling like natural extensions of who they are.
Evie (Sophia Telegadis) is the one who expresses the most disbelief about the validity of their excursion, not so subtly dropping hints that she has a crush on Jeremy. Aparna (Mohana Krishnan) is the most straight-laced of the foursome, while Jeremy’s best friend, Yoshi (Aidan Laprete), is a drug dealer whose loose lips and proclivity for having substances at the most inconvenient times (say, when a police officer pulls the students over for speeding) threaten to derail the whole excursion. They all play their parts well enough, but you can see the endgame for these characters’ arcs a mile down the road.
Yet given that a good portion of the film takes place on the road with these characters, it’s worth noting that Farrelly and Cinematographer Itai Ne’eman work to make these enclosed spaces interesting. Even if they stick to a standard shot list, they’re rarely sequenced the same way twice. The camera will focus on two characters having a conversation in the backseat while we still hear the sounds of the front-seat conversation, as if to show how the characters can bond with each other and have their own worlds of interaction, even if privacy is at a premium.
In many ways, Farrelly’s film is a project out of time. Aside from the cars’ models or the use of smartphones, it wouldn’t take much to convince me this is a film from the early 2000s rather than now. Sanding down the elements of specificity allows its messages to resonate more easily with the audience. The final year before college (or graduation in general) is a time of quiet, devastating transition. It’s potentially the last moment we’re the closest with people who we thought would be in our lives forever.
Often, we may come back to our homes and communities and find not that we’ve outgrown them, but that we’ve simply grown in different ways, and the pieces don’t quite fit back together. It’s a season of precipice, where what we know is so close to being lost and what is unknown is within grasp. In some form or another, this period of transition is a right of passage for all, and in that respect, “Driver’s Ed” is not just a “coming of age” story but a “coming to terms” one. Thankfully, we have it to guide us as we embark on similar roads in our lives.
