DRIVER’S ED (2025)

Starring Sam Nivola, Sophie Telegadis, Mohana Krishnan, Aidan Laprete, Molly Shannon, Kumail Nanjiani, Lilah Pate, Tim Baltz, Bri Giger, Marley Aliah, Alyssa Milano, Ella Stiller, Clayton Farris, Chelcie Lynn, Robert Walker-Branchaud, Jesse Golliher, Abe Farrelly, Travis Przyblski, J.C. Currais, Thomas Beck, Finn Harry, Apple Farrelly and Bob Farrelly.

Screenplay by Thomas Moffett.

Directed by Bobby Farrelly.

Distributed by Vertical. 102 minutes. Rated R.

Mere weeks after his brother and former filmmaking partner Peter Farrelly let loose Balls Up –  by far the worst movie so far this year – the other Farrelly Brother drops his own candidate for the year’s worst film. And Molly Shannon is in both of them. Gulp. 

First things first – Bobby’s new movie Driver’s Ed is better than Balls Up. So there’s that. In fact, it’s actually kind of okay. Not great or anything. It’s sweetly inessential, but head and shoulders above what Peter belched up.

Of course, Driver’s Ed was better back in the year 2000 (right during the Farrelly Brothers’ heyday) when it was called Road Trip and starred Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott and Tom Green. (Yes, really, Road Trip was one thing in Green’s flash-in-the-pan career that was actually fairly good.)

Well, okay, Driver’s Ed and Road Trip are not exactly the same films. Road Trip was raunchier. In fact, for what is being billed as a return to the 1990s coming-of-age sex comedies, Driver’s Ed is surprisingly pretty chaste. But they are close. Damned close. Just without the sex tape.

However, there’s an underlying melancholy to Driver’s Ed – a sense of the filmmaker trying to revisit the genre that made him famous while realizing the world has moved on.

Driver’s Ed is a drama about a high school student who is missing his girlfriend who went to school a few hours away. Therefore, he hijacks his school’s driver training vehicle – with three fellow student drivers – for an impromptu road trip to find his girl, who seems like she may be ghosting him. He dumps the teacher on the training course (since when has driver’s ed been a five-person group activity?) and heads out in search of love and adventure.

In the meantime, the stern school principal (Shannon), the goofy driver’s ed teacher (Kumail Nanjiani) and a couple of local cops (Tim Baltz and Bri Giger) try to track the truant students down with the stolen car.

Jeremy is played by Sam Nivola (son of actors Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, who was also part of the cast of the third season of White Lotus). He’s a sweet, smart, hopelessly naïve sort who is more than willing to put his life on hold for a relationship.

His three co-riders are a bunch of high school types: the cute, vaguely punky girl (Sophie Telegadis), the uptight, closeted straight-A student (Mohana Krishnan), the irreverent Asian part-time pot dealer (Aidan Laprete). They start out not liking each other but grow close during their mobile Breakfast Club-type experiences.

Like most road movies, the miles matter less than the metamorphosis. The film’s best moments come when the kids stop chasing Jeremy’s girlfriend and start discovering themselves.

Honestly, the young cast are probably better than the material they have been given, but their charisma – separately and together – pretty much hold Driver’s Ed together. Surprisingly, they all come out of the film looking better than the Hollywood pros, as Shannon and Nanjiani’s characters come off as broad and kind of off-putting. The kids feel real; the adults feel like punchlines in search of a setup.

There is little that is overly surprising in Driver’s Ed, although there was a nice plot twist with the girlfriend when they actually reached her college. There is also a cute cat who added very little to the story but was still a welcome presence whenever he was onscreen.

So I guess Bobby Farrelly wins the race for the most relevant (or perhaps, least irrelevant) Farrelly brother in this motion-picture go around. Still, after all this time in the driver’s seat of major films, you’d think these two still wouldn’t feel like they are chasing their learner’s permits.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: May 15, 2026.