X-Ray Cat Loathed Taking DRIVING LESSONS With Ron Weasley!!

Merrick here...
X-Ray Cat sent in a look at Rupert Grint in DRIVING LESSONS. It has "wacky hijinks"! Weasley & "wacky hijinks"...such great sadness. Of all the HARRY POTTER kids, I've always felt Grint was the one most likely to succeed in the long run -- he has a depth & on-screen comfort the other kids can't seem to find. If Cat's review is any indication, Grint will have to choose...more wisely...if his soon-to-be-post-Potter career is to survive.
Here's X-Ray Cat...

I went and saw DRIVING LESSONS because the girlfriend has to see anything vaguely Potter-related and this indie dramedy stars Rupert "Ron Weasley" Grint, who plays Ben, a 16-year-old Bible studies student living under the tight thumb of his fanatically religious mother, played by Laura Linney, who demands that Ben get a job to help donate money to one of her charity projects, a senile old widowed man she's boarding. At the same time, she's cheating on her minister husband with the hip, progressive youth leader. Ben finds a job assisting Evie Walton, played by fellow Potter employee Julie Walters, who is washed-up and lonely actress who tricks Ben into a weekend full of wacky hijinks, teary revelations, and typical coming-of-age shit. All of this is done in the blandest way possible by first-time director Jeremy Brock, whose script for LAST KING OF SCOTLAND is out now, and looks significantly less sleep-inducing. It's the exact sort of dreck that still makes "independent film" synonymous with "long and boring" for the Man on the Street. Brock would surely defend against this argument with a long and boring speech about how all movies don't have to have car crashes. True, but it is nice if they at least move forward in some way, have a point, and don't feature Julie Walters hamming it up and delivering about a thousand "I can't believe an old woman said that!" remarks a minute. There's also the fact that the climax of the film involves the aforementioned senile old man putting on Laura Linney's clothes and makeup, getting into a car, and hitting her with it, right after Walters delivers an irrelevant and incomprehensible speech to a crowd of Christians who respond by jumping out of their seats and practically speaking tongues. It's a sequence so ridiculous in a movie so poorly executed, that it's hard to tell whether it's even being played for laughs or not, and if it is, it's completely incongruous with the rest of the movie, which already has no style or sensibility of its own, and has uncanny identity issues with finding its demographic as it alternates between winking at the older crowd, playing up the family aspect, and throwing in random sex and profanity. The only watchable aspect is actually Grint, who does a likable take on Dustin Hoffman's role in THE GRADUATE (also named Ben...good one, Brock...) and whose always faintly humorous face acting keeps the surrounding movie from falling completely into oblivion. DRIVING LESSONS is in limited release now, and due to the three other people in attendance, I really doubt it will be opening much wider. If it is in your town, and you or someone in your life is a Potter freak, then I suggest you remember the word Netflix, or the phrase complete and utter avoidance.