TIFF 2025: Driver’s Ed and The Ugly

While Driver’s Ed and The Ugly are vastly different films, both provide thoughtful social commentary on their respective issues. Bobby Farrelly‘s coming-of-age comedy skirts around the challenges of modern dating as a teenager (Driver’s Ed), while Yeon Sang-ho‘s graphic novel adaption questions society’s deranged evaluation of conventional female body standards (The Ugly). Both films had their world premieres at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Driver’s Ed (dir. Bobby Farrelly)

Even when working on their own, any comedic effort from the Farrelly brothers is bound to, at the very least, spark curiosity. With Driver’s Ed, Bobby Farrelly tries to capitalize on the goodwill of his family’s filmography, but the film doesn’t come close to the classics that came before it.

As Jeremy (Sam Nivola) enters his final year of high school, he gets dumped by his college-age girlfriend, Samantha (Lilah Pate), who quickly gives up on their long distance relationship. Unhappy with this outcome, he hijacks his driver’s ed car in the middle of a lesson, and is joined reluctantly by classmates who just happen to be in the car (Sophie Telegadis, Mohana Krishnan, Aidan Laprete). As they race towards college campus in North Carolina, they are chased by the school’s principal (Molly Shannon) and incompetent driver’s ed teacher (Kumail Nanjiani).

This is the type of film that likely needed to be more raunchy and comedically extreme in order to stand out. As it is, Driver’s Ed is dependably entertaining, but alas, a bit pedestrian as a comedy. Thomas Moffett’s screenplay doesn’t necessarily chart any new territory, but as a coming-of-age story, still hits all the right notes and offers some renewed discourse on dating in high school. The narrative isn’t revelatory by any means, but the teenage relationships being portrayed aren’t belittled and any semblance of “puppy love” is viewed through a thoughtful lens. Nivola also demonstrates himself to be a capable leading man, albeit in a role that didn’t ask too much of him.

What’s lacking is a sense of renewed ingenuity to energize the film, which as it is, sits on rather muted and tonally blunted heights. With teenage/coming-of-age comedies being a somewhat exhausted genre that seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years, anything short of invigorating is unlikely to catch fire. Something either much more endearing or bombastically inappropriate would have made the film stand out. As it stands, it sits somewhere in between, and is adequately entertaining, but also unmistakably mediocre.

The Ugly (dir. Yeon Sang-ho)

Anchored by an intriguing premise filled with plenty of surprises, The Ugly is a tightly-crafted narrative that carries hints of a much grander theme. Yeon Sang-ho continues to prove himself to be a dependable filmmaker, even on a smaller scale, but likely overplayed the film’s need for constant plot twists. Within the film is a deeply seeded commentary of Korean cultural norms when it comes to beauty standards, which unfortunately ends up taking a backseat.

Starring Park Jeong-min as both a blind man (in flashbacks) and the son, Im Dong-hwan’s life is upended when he learns about his mother’s remains being found after more than 40 years. His father, Im Young-gyu (played in present day by Kwon Hae-hyo), is a renowned blind stamp maker, in the the midst of being the subject of a new documentary. As the documentary crew begin to focus more on Dong-hwan’s mother, and how her disappearance years ago might be more sinister than one might think, he starts questioning his father’s integrity as family secrets are unearthed.

As a thriller, The Ugly is captivating and pulsates with a sharp and tonally precise backdrop. Even when the film slows down, it still carries a kinetic rhythm that feels invigorating, and never loses its gripping ambiance. Park also shines playing both father and son, anchoring the film with his calm, yet magnetic energy.

And with a degree of surprising subtlety, the film interrogates Korea’s seemingly stagnated culture of beauty standards. It’s presented as something that permeates visual bounds, affecting even the blind. The problem is, this interrogation happens relatively late in the film, after a pretty significant plot twist, which was perhaps a miscalculation. An earlier reveal would have allowed the film more time to capitalize on one its most interesting elements, which ends up being short changed in many ways.

Despite that, The Ugly is suspenseful and calculated, and a thoughtfully crafted film by a constantly evolving filmmaker. Yeon is equally as impressive with smaller scale dramatic exercises, which will certainly continue to complement his more commercially inclined films.

Follow our coverage of TIFF 2025 here!