Review: 'Drive-Away Dolls' is raucously funny
Oh brothers, where art thou? Joel and Ethan Coen made movie history by making 18 unique and unforgettable films together (OK, not "The Ladykillers" which was beyond saving). Then the bros spilt up in 2018. Go ahead, cry. I did, with visions of "Fargo," "No Country for Old Men" and "The Big Lebowski" still dancing in my head.
Joel Coen went solo in 2021 to direct Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of Macbeth," starring his wife Frances McDormand, alongside Denzel Washington, as an aging couple on a killing spree.
Now Ethan Coen goes it alone for the decidedly non-Shakespearean "Drive-Away Dolls," a raucously funny lesbian road movie, co-written by his wife Tricia Cooke, who has edited many Coen brothers films. What do these parents of two know about a lesbian lifestyle?
"Tricia's queer and sweet and I'm straight and stupid," Ethan Coen said recently of their nontraditional marriage -- each has separate partners -- that led to this gleefully nontraditional movie. My advice? Go with the flow.
Cooke's history inspired the hijinks of the sexually ravenous Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and bottled-up Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) as they hit the road from Pennsylvania to Florida without missing a lesbian bar in between (check out the She Shed).
Set in 1999 and catching the screwball sex comedy vibe of the period (remember "Go Fish" and "But I'm a Cheerleader"), "Drive-Away Dolls" also catches the goofy joy of the Coen's own "Raising Arizona," starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as babynappers being pursued by dangerous male dimwits.
Much the same thing happens to Jamie and Marian as they hit up Curlie (the great Bill Camp) to drive a car to Tallahassee. Jamie wants to escape the vindictive rage of Sukie (Beanie Feldstein, terrific), her cop ex-girlfriend who caught her cheating. Marian just wants to visit her aunt, go birding and read "The Europeans" by Henry James (the hidden joke here is choice).
That's a cue for Coen and Cooke to pile on the madcap mix-ups. It seems the Dodge Aries the dolls are driving belongs to a collector (charmer Pedro Pascal in a violent cameo) and contains a suitcase with mystery contents that don't stay mysterious for long. I'll never tell.
In hot pursuit are small-time crooks Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson), who work for a crime boss played by "Rustin" Oscar nominee Colman Domingo. Matt Damon also shows up as a right-wing politician, which leads to scandalous revelations involving sex toys, and newly-minted Grammy winner Miley Cyrus appears in a flashback that you'll need to see to believe.
"Thin" would be too strong a word to describe the plot, leaving the actors to carry the weight of a script that must fight to sustain its scant 84 minutes. Qualley, the daughter of actress Andie MacDowell, kicks her Texas accent into high gear, while Viswanathan gentles her role into something funny and surprisingly touching. The movie would be unthinkable without them.
Still, the transgressive force that enlivens most Coen brothers movies is curiously absent in "Drive-Away Girls," which never feels more tame than when it's trying most to shock. But there's no denying the frisky fun even when the film lurches off course.
Is the result as deadpan dazzling as an actual Coen brothers movie? Let's not kid ourselves. The good news is that Ethan and Joel have recently disclosed plans to reunite for a horror film. I'm so in for that. Give the brothers points for showing that you really can have one without the other. But as "Drive-Away Dolls" proves, there's nothing like the real thing.
