'Driving Lessons' Wobbles Down A Familiar Road

Julie Walters teaches Harry Potter's friend Rupert Grint about cars and about life in "Driving Lessons." (By Jay Maidment -- Sony Pictures Classics)

There is but one reason to sign up for "Driving Lessons": to watch Rupert Grint -- you remember him as Harry Potter's redheaded pal Ron Weasley -- squaring off with Julie Walters, Queen of the English Scenery Chewers.

Sure, Grint's acting range may consist of only two modes -- looking flustered or about to be flustered -- but his air of perpetual innocence, so endearing in those "Potter" films, conveys nicely. And he makes a disarming foil for Walters, who engages the audience in her own way -- with the seemingly improvisational cheekiness she brought to films such as "Educating Rita," "Personal Services" and "Calendar Girls."

In this otherwise forgettable British comedy, Grint plays Ben, the introverted teenage son of very religious parents, and Walters is Evie Walton, a retired actress who has advertised for a helper. Ben takes the job, only too glad to get away from his controlling mother (Laura Linney) and somber preacher of a father (Nicholas Farrell). But he soon realizes he has exchanged one anxiety-provoking situation for another. Evie is a demanding personality who insists the painfully shy Ben perform selections from Shakespeare with her and, later, that he drive her wherever she wants. To Ben, still traumatized by his spectacular failure at a recent driving test, this amounts to pure panic.

Early on, the movie's life-affirmative agenda is ploddingly clear: Evie is going to save Ben from his harpy mother, a one-dimensional manipulator who reveres Jesus Christ just a little too much and forces her shy son to play a tree in a religious play. (Laura Linney, new agent for you on Line 1.) And of course Evie gets something out of this, too: a much-needed friend.

Writer-director Jeremy Brock, who wrote "The Last King of Scotland" and marks his directing debut here, seems oddly tickled with the idea of bashing Christian figures. And Linney's willingness to play such a thankless caricature is just as puzzling. But the interplay between Grint's deer-in-the-headlights Ben and the verbally swashbuckling Walters is engaging.

Early in the movie, for example, Evie loudly admonishes Ben for not being curious -- not wondering, for instance, if she's a "roaring lesbian." What makes this funny is that she does this on the upper deck of a crowded London bus. When she asks Ben if he's gay, he stammers, red-faced, that he most definitely isn't.

"Not gay, apparently," retorts Evie, loud enough for all to hear.

It's an intergenerational kinship reminiscent of "Harold and Maude," the 1971 film that starred Bud Cort as a depressed 20-year-old who's obsessed with death, and Ruth Gordon as the 79-year-old woman who teaches him to believe in life again. But the classic (made in a brief golden era when Hollywood encouraged such bold conceits) is a romantic affair -- memorable due to a climactic scene in which a smitten Harold slips a wedding ring into Maude's hand: She impulsively hurls it into a nearby lake so that, she tells him, she'll "always know where it is."

In "Driving Lessons," however, Ben and Evie are most definitely pals and nothing more. And the significant object that binds them is a car key, which -- in another impulsive gesture -- Evie swallows. Her purpose: to prevent Ben from driving them home, so they're forced to achieve her dream of spending the night at a campground. "You can tell God I forced you," she retorts.

Well, the ring scene went down a whole lot better. And frankly, so did "Harold and Maude." But fans of Grint and Walters will probably understand "Driving Lessons" isn't seeking awards for originality, and they might be content to take this ride, even knowing the driver has only a learner's permit.

Driving Lessons (98 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for profanity and mild sexual situations.