Driver’s Ed Review: Bobby Farrelly Makes a Charming but Forgettable Throwback Coming-of-Age Comedy

The Farrelly Brothers, Peter and Bobby, were once among the preeminent names in comedy, giving us such classics as There’s Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, and more. So it was surprising that, after one of them won the Academy Award for Best Picture for Green Book, they’ve both (separately) been making mostly straight-to-streaming slop. Directed by Bobby Farrelly, Driver’s Ed seems on paper like it could harken back to the classics the duo once made, but ends up being something else entirely, for better or worse.

What is Driver’s Ed about?

Driver’s Ed follows a group of high school students who go on a road trip in a stolen driver’s ed car after one of them decides he needs to run to his college freshman ex-girlfriend to win her back. It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill high-concept coming-of-age/rom-com premise, but it is missing the over-the-top antics a movie like this needs to succeed — which is disappointing considering that it comes from one of the guys who brought the world Dumb and Dumber.

Driver’s Ed Review

The humor in Thomas Moffett’s script is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, which is par for the course for late-career Farrelly work. In fact, the only thing that makes Driver’s Ed really resemble the style of humor that the Farrelly Brothers cut their teeth on are the spare R-rated gag here and there, like one in which a college student runs by the camera with full-frontal nudity. I’m not typically prudish, but this arguably would have been better had it leaned into the tween-friendly John Hughes coming-of-age films that clearly inspired it.

Driver’s Ed does also have that distinct studio comedy sheen that every one of the Farrellys’ had in the ‘90s and 2000s. It’s entirely competent and inoffensive, but in this day and age, it’s easy to see why this was relegated to a VOD release instead of getting a full theatrical push. It’s the type of bland, personality-less comedy that feels like a relic of the past.

And for what it’s worth, Driver’s Ed does at least attempt to have some sense of modernity by having Kumail Nanjiani in the cast. It’s a role that ‌feels like he is well past needing in his career. Was Eternals that much of a bomb that he had to go back to being a comedic side character instead of a lead? Or was it simply the fact that he could do a few day’s work for an easy paycheck? This feels much more in line with what Molly Shannon (SNL) and Tim Baltz (The Righteous Gemstones) have been doing these days, but their roles are just as disinteresting as Nanjiani’s.

That being said, there is one thing that allows Driver’s Ed to win audiences over, and that is its abundance of heart. For all that the film gets wrong with its comedic aspects, it is a genuinely charming coming-of-age story. Even though the romantic storyline plays out in exactly the way you would expect, Moffett does a great job of getting you invested in the story, feeling nostalgic for the high school comedies that you grew up on.

The young cast also fares much better than the grown-ups, largely because of the exceptional chemistry they share with one another. Sam Nivola (The White Lotus) is the film’s lead, and he’s effortlessly likable in a very goofy way. His friends, played by Sophie Telegadis, Mohana Krishnan, and Aidan Laprete, all feel surprisingly uncliched, each getting several moments to shine and break out of their shells.

Is Driver’s Ed worth watching?

If you expect Driver’s Ed to live up to the laugh-out-loud qualities that the Farrelly Brothers brought to their early work, you are sure to be disappointed. However, within their post-separation filmographies, which have yielded decidedly mixed results, Bobby Farrelly’s third film is a likable, if entirely forgettable, outing.

Driver’s Ed is in theaters and VOD on May 15.

Driver’s Ed Review: Bobby Farrelly Makes a Charming but Forgettable Throwback Coming-of-Age Comedy