Drive-Away Dolls: Coen Brother Ethan Goes Low Solo, For Laughs Not Laurels
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
It’s been five years since Joel and Ethan Coen made a movie together (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs). This is substantial time apart for siblings who’ve collaborated since the ‘80s, and who are better known as “the Coen brothers” than by their individual names.
What they’ve done on their respective solo paths speaks to long-running speculation over who did what in this creative tandem. On his own, Joel Cohen — the dour brother who did more of the talking in interviews, and who was “the director” back when awards rules didn’t recognize co-directors — courted Oscars with The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington.
And Ethan Cohen? Let the record show he made Drive-Away Dolls, something far closer to a Coen brothers movie, spliced with a ‘90s style road-trip sex comedy, except it’s young women scoping young women this time around. (Ethan and his wife, co-writer Tricia Cooke, have said they envision this as the opener of a lesbian B-movie trilogy).
Drive-Away Dolls is about two women (Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan) on a haphazard road trip to Florida, chased all the while by incredibly stupid criminals (a Coen staple). Sex and bawdy comedy ensue. The plot and underlying revelation, such as it is, turns out to be an extended dick joke (pun unavoidable).
Go with it, and it’s a fun, flimsily light romp. And if you think of Coen films that can be described as “fun” (e.g. Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou), you might assume they bear the fingerprints of younger brother Ethan.
It’s probably not as simple as that. And film discourse on social media being what it is, spouses can’t help but be dragged in (Cooke and Joel’s wife Frances McDormand being the putative dual Yokos).
Whatever the reason, the brothers are apparently working together again, at least on a script. In the meantime, I’m glad they made the movies they did. Macbeth was artful and haunting. And Drive-Away Dolls is quick and dirty (84 minutes) and has some decidedly unsophisticated laughs.
Free-spirited Texan Jamie (Qualley) has just broken up with her angry cop girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) and is looking for a fresh start. She convinces her uptight best friend, office-drone Marian (Viswanathan) to join her in an act of spontaneity to loosen her up.
Jamie is such a thoughtlessly impulsive party animal, it’s hard to imagine what her character is even doing with no-nonsense types like Sukie or Marian. But observations like this amount to overthinking.
In any case, they settle (for some reason) on Tallahassee as a good place to recharge. A visit to a “drive-away” establishment — where one contractually agrees to drive a car to another city on the owner’s behalf — reveals there is a vehicle to be driven to Tallahassee. It’s like a sign from heaven.
Except the car is meant to be picked up by gangsters with a mysterious cargo in the trunk to deliver.
It’s a mix-up that sees the aforementioned stupid hit-men (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) on their tail with malice aforethought and some blindingly dumb wrong turns, all to the consternation of the big boss back home (Colman Domingo).
Jamie and Marian, meanwhile, take side-trips of their own, discovering what passes for same-sex bars in Red States, drinking copiously, making new friends with the members of a women’s college soccer team, and improbably crossing paths with a phony family-values Southern politician (Matt Damon).
The movie unfolds with what seems like a series of random left turns, which, in some cases, may have been written on the day of shooting. But Qualley and Viswanathan are a likeable odd-couple, in a dumb movie rendered smartly enough to not overstay its welcome.
Drive-Away Dolls. Directed by Ethan Coen. Written by Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen. Starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan and Beanie Feldstein. In theatres February 23.