Drive-Away Dolls

Drive-Away Dolls

Jamie, an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend, and her demure friend Marian desperately needs to loosen up. In search of a fresh start, the two embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 83 minutes
  • Genre: Comedy, Crime
  • Stars: Geraldine Viswanathan, Margaret Qualley, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon, Bill Camp, Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson, Connie Jackson, Miley Cyrus, Annie Gonzalez, Abby Hilden, Josh Flitter, Sam McCrea
  • Director: Ethan Coen
 Comments
  • ModernMode - 29 June 2024
    Lesbian Roadtrip in 1999
    The Coen Brothers have made some movies that are weird in a good way. Think "O Brother Where Art Thou" and "Raising Arizona". While "Drive-Away Dolls" is directed only by Ethan Coen, it is also weird in a good way. Geraldine Viswanathan is best known for the TV series "Miracle Workers". She and Margaret Qualley do a great job. And if you pay close attention you'll see familiar faces in small roles. Two lesbians take a road trip in a car they're paid to deliver. Only they get distracted along the way and don't deliver it in time. They end up getting chased over some very odd cargo. It kept my attention throughout, but bible thumpers need not apply.
  • moviesfilmsreviewsinc - 7 May 2024
    Not what I was expecting
    Drive-Away Dolls is a queer road-movie caper directed by Ethan Coen and co-written by Tricia Cooke. It is Coen's second film without his brother Joel, following his Jerry Lee Lewis documentary in 2022. The film has a flimsy premise that resembles classic Coen brothers films like No Country For Old Men or Fargo. Joel and Ethan Coen, a renowned film-making duo, have a reputation for uncanny synchronization, often giving the same answer to questions even if asked separately. They are known as "the two-headed director," but their respective features suggest a surgical detachment less than a single brain split in twain. However, their works during their brief hiatus have given the impression of a single sensibility divided evenly between them. Joel's austere, atmospheric take on Macbeth is the goofiest and loosest entry, while Ethan's road comedy Drive-Away Dolls is the goofiest and loosest entry. Joel's solo project mines the history of American experimental theater for a bold, charcoal-sketched revision of the Bard's canon, while Ethan's sexploitation send-up revolves around a handful of pilfered dildos. This bawdy Sapphic joyride is far from minor Coen miscellanea, as Ethan and wife Tricia Cooke have marshaled the usual plot devices toward broader, more sophomoric ends. The film features an errant briefcase from No Country for Old Men, a pair of hitmen, and a loquacious wiseacre in the mold of O Brother, Where Art Thou's Ulysses Everett McGill. Drive-Away Dolls is a wild goose chase film set on the eve of Y2K, the twilight of Clintonism, and the eve of a conservative resurgence. The film offers a surprising openness of sentiment, offering the sweetest love story in a filmography constantly charged with a self-satisfied ironic remove from its own characters. The archness of technique that has turned off a vocal faction of detractors has been dialed way back, with the allusive streak more incidental than insistent. The essence of the Coenesque comes through strongest in the pristine dialogue, with its baroque turns of phrase, absurd circular repetitions, and idle philosophical musings. However, this shedding of seriousness has its costs, most noticeably in the directorial rigor a notch or two below the standard. The characters want to get their rocks off, and the Coen-Cooke braintrust likewise get their stylistic kicks, indulging in wipe-style scene transitions so cheesy that a viewer's reaction to the first one determines whether they will come along for the trip or get left behind. Interspersed passages of hazy psychedelia pad a svelte 84-minute runtime, featuring Miley Cyrus as radical visual artist Cynthia Plaster-Caster. Drive-Away Dolls is an essential work in the Coen corpus, an evolution more than a regression or sacrifice, and it's the rare case in which a preponderance of dick jokes heralds a newfound advance in maturity.