The Farrelly brothers, The Safdie Brothers, The Wachowski sisters – there’s no shortage of sibling director duos who have parted ways, either permanently or temporarily, to experiment on solo works. The Coen brothers joined their ranks with Joel Coen’s solo-directed film The Tragedy of Macbeth in 2021. If The Tragedy of Macbeth might have given any clue as to who the “serious one” of the duo was, Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls seems designed to give an equally emphatic answer as to the source of the duo’s comedic chops.
Except things aren’t quite that straight forward. For one, Drive-Away Dolls represents a different artistic partnership for Coen, rather than a truly solo journey. Coen wrote Drive-Away Dolls with his partner, Tricia Cooke (who also seemed to be a co-director in all but name). Cooke, who is queer, drew upon her personal experience with lesbian bars in the 90s and cooked up the idea with Coen decades ago, with the aim of creating a queer road-trip B movie. On paper, it’s a great idea – combining the offbeat comedic sensibilities of a Coen movie with a breezier, road trip comedy and a different perspective. But on screen, Drive-Away Dolls doesn’t push the comedic or storytelling envelope nearly far enough to be worth recommending. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen done before, but better. Originally penned with the title Drive-Away Dykes, it’s hard not to feel like the film’s final output is as defanged as its title.
Starring Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as Jamie and Marian, close friends who decide to take a road trip to Tallahassee, Florida, Drive-Away Dolls features a classic comedic Macguffin mix-up in the form of a shiny metal briefcase. Jamie and Marian end up transporting the briefcase to Tallahassee by mistake, chased by the world’s worst goons (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) as they stop at gay bars, soccer team basement parties, and a string of low-budget motels, less focused on the goods hidden in the trunk of their car than they are at getting Marian laid after a years-long dry spell.
In terms of what it gets right, Drive-Away Dolls strongest effort is with the casting and execution of its leads. Qualley and Viswanathan establish a genuine sense of character and chemistry in the brief confines of their 84 minutes, and the more earnest parts of the film are its most successful. There is a slice of Drive-Away Dolls that feels less like a zany caper and more like a simple romantic comedy, and this is the film at its most successful. Qualley seems to be channeling a Brad Pitt-esque performance in her character, and it works well against Viswanathan’s tightly-wound Marian. Drive-Away Dolls also packs in a few hilarious cameos in a short amount of time.
But when it comes to everything else: the zany caper, the antics the characters get up to on a road trip, the raunchy sex – it feels like Drive-Away Dolls is playing at a volume just a little too quiet. The screwball comedy barely registers, the characters spend most of their road trip time sitting on hotel room beds, and the raunchy sex never feels like it goes further than showing what a dildo looks like on screen. It feels like the film completely whizzes past the parts that should be the most fun – Jamie and Marian exploring roadside attractions, meeting other women, and making mistakes. Instead, they revolve most of the plot around the goons chasing the women. The proceeding reminded me of a less interesting or funny version of Burn After Reading, which does manage to nail the delicate balance between the absurd comedy and manages to make the strange caper part of the film compelling. At the end of the day, basically, I’m relieved to hear the Coen brothers are reuniting.
Drive-Away Dolls releases February 23.