Drive-Away Dolls Review

Ethan Coen makes his first solo film with the lesbian-centric crime-comedy Drive-Away Dolls.

Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are lesbian friends in Philadelphia. When Marian plans to see her aunt in Tallahassee, Jamie convinces her friend to work for a drive-away service to get them to the Floridian capital. Due to a misunderstanding, Jamie and Marian end up taking a car containing a mysterious briefcase which leads to them being pursued by a criminal enterprise.

Ethan Coen has had a great career as one-half of the Coen Brothers. With his brother, Joel, they made some great crime capers, like Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country for Old Men. Some were comedic, others were serious and the brothers showed they were masters of ground-level crime stories. Drive-Away Dolls seemed to fit in the same mould as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski where two people accidentally find themselves wound up with criminals. Sadly, Drive-Away Dolls was not up to the standard of those classics.

Drive-Away Dolls has a money in a briefcase plot. It didn’t matter what was in the briefcase, just that everyone wanted it. Many of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers used a MacGuffin as a device to drive the plot. Drive-Away Dolls appeared as a cross between Pulp Fiction and The Transporter since the plot revolves around a special briefcase, and the employers hope their couriers don’t look at the contents of the package. There was also a road movie narrative where Marian and Jamie and the goons that were following them were having to travel a large sway of territory and meet a load of colourful characters including a lesbian soccer team.

Despite the talent and experience involved with the making of Drive-Away Dolls, it came across as a tried effort from a first-time filmmaker. It felt like everyone was trying to emulate Tarantino’s films since his early films were crime capers that focused on some larger-than-life characters. Drive-Away Dolls aimed to have witty dialogue and exchanges throughout the film, like Tarantino’s effects. This included Jamie philosophising and talking about her sexual experiences, and one of the goons hunting Jamie and Marian used his charm instead of violence to extract information. Instead of violence, Drive-Away Dolls had a lot of sex scenes and sex toys as a big part of the narrative. This ended up reminding me of Mathew Buck’s review of Fat Slags.

There was an air of desperation with the direction to try and make Drive-Away Dolls flashier and more energetic. There were lots of stylish editing techniques to try and speed the film along, especially during the first act when Jamie and Marian get the car and the criminals go on the hunt. There were some 1960s psychedelic sequences scattered throughout the film that will lead to initial WTF reactions although they did make a bit more sense as the film progresses. Drive-Away Dolls had a short 84-minute runtime, and the film’s plot was threadbare as if the screenplay wasn’t fleshed out enough.

Drive-Away Dolls had a cast made up of young starlets and seasoned actors which should have given audiences hope. Qualley was known for her roles in The Leftovers and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and I enjoyed her supporting role in Poor Things, but she gave a poor performance in Drive-Away Dolls. She spoke with an exaggerated Texan accent and was a sexually loose woman. This exaggerated performance extended to Beanie Feldstein as Jamie’s ex-girlfriend. Feldstein was funny in Booksmart, but her character in Drive-Away Dolls can simply be defined as aggressive. This leads to the question of whether these actresses were directed to give these broad performances. Viswanathan was better as Mirian, being a more straight-laced and uptight person who Jamie was trying to loosen up.

The bigger names in the film were Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon who played minor characters. They probably only worked on the film because of Coen’s involvement. Damon even had a working relationship with Coen since he appeared in the True Grit remake.

Drive-Away Dolls was a film with potential. It could have been a fun crime caper that had a female twist, but it was a one-note, undercooked film.