Learning to Drive - B-

Rated R, 89 minutes

The sweet new dramedy "Learning to Drive" is as pleasant and comfortable as a Sunday drive. It's a well-acted but safely predictable movie that mines the overused coming-of-age genre, but you'll still leave with a smile. Wendy (Patricia Clarkson) is a sharp-tongued Manhattan book critic who is shattered when her husband Ted (Jake Weber) leaves her. In order to visit her daughter (Grace Gummer) in upstate New York, Wendy begins taking driving lessons from Darwan (Ben Kingsley) an American citizen originally from India who makes a living as a cabbie and giving driving lessons. The two form an unlikely friendship that teaches them both about their current life situation. Directed by Isabel Coixet ("Elegy" - also with Clarkson and Kingsley) and written by Sarah Kernochan ("What Lies Beneath"), "Learning to Drive" is a familiar, charming but hardly revelatory look at a middle-aged woman's often uneasy transition to singlehood and trying to new things, but works mainly due to its talented cast. Led by the always engaging and one of cinema's most underrated character actresses, Clarkson, who ably grounds the film, along with Kingsley, both of whom share a warm chemistry, especially in their driving lessons together. I also appreciate that "Learning to Drive" is very female-driven, given the director, writer and star are all women, something that isn't seen often in Hollywood these days. The life lessons and platitudes espoused here are a little too obvious but my favorite coming from Kingsley: "all you need is courage and a little gas" and down the stretch you have a sense of the road it's taking, which is actually a little braver than most for this genre. I appreciated Clarkson's understated, likable performance, which helps the film, given that it could've faltered (and likely been much more annoying) under another actress such as Susan Sarandon or Diane Keaton. Most of the enjoyable "Learning to Drive" works pleasantly enough, and is a bit of a trifle, but it's a serviceable transition from late summer to early fall.