‘Driver’s Ed’ Review: Bobby Farrelly’s Tame Throwback Exhumes, But Can’t Revive, the ’90s Teen Comedy

Both an obvious product of ’90s nostalgia and the definitive cure for it, Bobby Farrelly’s terminally innocuous “Driver’s Ed” can be described as a youth comedy, but whose youth? Though technically it is set in the current day, because smartphones exist and someone mentions Ritalin, the sensibilities of both director and screenplay (by Thomas Moffett) are so trapped in the past that the whole movie feels like a defrosted caveman sporting a pair of earbuds — which is essentially the plot of 1992’s “Encino Man,” apropos of nothing much except that after “Driver’s Ed,” all your comparisons will for a time gesture toward pre-millennial pop-cultural artifacts.

It’s hard to remember that era being quite so unfunny, though, nor quite so tame, which is especially disappointing given that Farrelly, working with his brother Peter on films like “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber” was responsible for some of…