'Drive-Away Dolls' Review: Ethan Coen’s Latest Movie Is Missing Something Crucial
Six years after their last film together with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, it has been beguiling to see where Joel and Ethan Coen have gone with their solo directorial efforts. Joel Coen—who received sole directing credit for the duo’s work up until 2004’s The Ladykillers—decided to use the opportunity to create a Shakespeare adaptation with 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. With black-and-white cinematography and an Oscar-nominated performance by Denzel Washington, Joel’s solo directorial debut felt like a surprising turn, one that got rid of many of the aspects that make up a “Coen brothers film.” Ethan Coen, however, took a different approach. After making the 2022 documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, Ethan set his sights on Drive-Away Dolls, a project he’d been looking to make for more than a decade, co-written by Tricia Cooke, the longtime editor for the Coen brothers and Ethan’s wife.
Both The Tragedy of Macbeth and Drive-Away Dolls give us two extremes from Joel and Ethan Coen. The Tragedy of Macbeth shows us a Coen film mostly away from the humor we’re used to, and with a more restrained, classical way of telling a story that has stood the test of time—far more in line with something like Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet than the guy who directed No Country for Old Men or O Brother, Where Art Thou? On the other end of this spectrum, Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s Drive-Away Dolls almost leans too much into the Coen brother's style, providing a burst of quirk and humor that can be overwhelming in such a pure state. Instead of finding a happy medium that these brothers together allows for, Drive-Away Dolls shows what happens when Ethan Coen goes all-in with the Coen brother's style, and the result is a strange, occasionally enjoyable story that mostly feels like someone attempting to mimic the Coens with mixed results.
What Is 'Drive-Away Dolls' About?
Drive-Away Dolls begins with a murder, a suitcase with something mysterious inside, and a sense of dark humor—all of which is right in line with what we’d expect from Ethan Coen. It's as if he’s playing with what we think his solo film will look like. But soon after, we meet Jamie (Margaret Qualley), a loudmouth with an absurd southern accent who has just been caught cheating on her police officer girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). Jamie’s best friend, Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is also in need of a change, as she’s been single for a few years, and needs to loosen up a bit. Marian figures she needs a new start and decides to move from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, and without anything to tie her to the area after her breakup, Jamie joins along for the ride.
However, what seems like a fairly straightforward ride down the interstate becomes far more complicated. Jamie wants to take all sorts of detours, from eccentric tourist traps to taking every opportunity she can take to get laid. But even worse is that the drive-away car they’ve picked up was meant for someone else, and unbeknownst to them, the trunk contains the aforementioned mysterious suitcase and an even more sinister piece of luggage. As Jamie and Marian head on their way to a new beginning, they put themselves in danger from a man known as “Chief” (Colman Domingo) and two dimwitted associates (C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick), as they do their best to get to Florida.
'Drive-Away Dolls' Screenplay Feels Like There's Something Missing
From the moment Qualley’s Jamie opens her mouth and starts going on her first of many rants, it becomes clear that Drive-Away Dolls is going to be...a lot. That’s not always a bad thing, for sure, but the film can often get overwhelmed by its quirks. Take, for example, the decision to go from scene to scene with cuts that feel reminiscent of a PowerPoint presentation, and a predilection to include weird, trippy interstitials that include pizza, dildos, and even Miley Cyrus. Drive-Away Dolls is set in 1999, and these mind-bending sequences clearly have a 1960s influence, yet the film doesn’t tell us what these have to do with the overall story until fairly late.
Drive-Away Dolls is also an odd screenplay, one that seems like it's going for the Coen comedy voice, and while the film often has the cadence of a Coen script, it’s lacking the same biting humor or wit. This is especially clear in Jamie’s excited diatribes that keep going and going, but rarely hit a clever angle to make them worthwhile. Not surprisingly, given the Coen penchant for great character actors, Drive-Away Dolls' script works best when focusing on its supporting cast. This is especially true with Bill Camp’s Curlie, who lends the car to Jamie and Marian. It’s not as though Camp is doing a better job than Qualley, it’s just that Drive-Away Dolls feels more comfortable with these types of characters. The same is true of Wilson and Slotnick’s Flint and Arliss, who seem more like Coen characters than the rest of the film. Again, it’s not that they’re more interesting than Jamie and Marian, but it’s when the film focuses on these characters that Drive-Away Dolls sounds like a writer in his wheelhouse.
However, Drive-Away Dolls certainly doesn’t know what to do with all of its secondary characters. Domingo is mostly wasted in a role that could’ve been given to anyone, but naturally, he inherently makes this character worthwhile. Similarly, beyond a few scenes where she can go wild and excessive, Feldstein also isn’t given much to do. Like Domingo, she’s having fun in a role that isn’t too demanding, but it’s a shame that these two aren’t given more substance.
Geraldine Viswanathan Finally Gets to Shine in the Spotlight with 'Drive-Away Dolls'
Yet Drive-Away Dolls primarily focuses on Qualley and Viswanathan, and they’re doing their best with a script struggling to do justice to their characters. Qualley is going a mile a minute, yet her character works best in the quieter moments, whether when she’s being romantic, or taking charge of a situation. Qualley plays Jamie like she’s mainlined every Coen brothers comedy to prepare, and she works best when she leans away from that instinct. This is what makes Viswanathan the best part of Drive-Away Dolls, as Marian is happiest when left alone with her thoughts, content with reading a book alone in her hotel rather than partying and making out with a sports team full of lesbians in a basement—where Jamie would thrive. More than anyone else, Marian is a fully realized character who we watch shift into finding what she wants in life and becoming more comfortable with herself. It’s also just wonderful to watch Viswanathan in a role that showcases her talents, after strong work in Miracle Workers and the indie comedy 7 Days.
On the other hand, Qualley is a bit more hit-or-miss as the eccentric Jamie. Much like her few moments in Poor Things, it’s almost as though she is going too broad for comedy's sake and sort of missing the mark. There’s a lot of accent happening here, and it’s as if Qualley is attempting to do her impression of what a Coen brothers’ character should be like, and not quite finding that tone. While Jamie is over-the-top, Marian is almost too restrained, so it makes sense that these two are at their best when they’re together, balancing each other out in a way that makes them both become better. Especially in the third act, when they get even closer, these quirks start to iron themselves out and the character becomes stronger because of it.
Drive-Away Dolls isn’t the most consistent film that Ethan Coen has worked on, but considering how long he and Tricia Cooke have been developing it, this is an intriguing eccentricity in a filmmaker’s work that we thought we knew—much like his brother’s take on Macbeth. Who would’ve thought Ethan Coen had a lesbian road comedy waiting to be unleashed in his oeuvre? At the very least, it is interesting that after a career of mostly focusing on straight white characters who aren’t always the brightest, Drive-Away Dolls puts entirely different characters as the focus.
Drive-Away Dolls is mostly a mixed bag. Sometimes, it’s a delightful road trip comedy from a perspective that we don’t often see, with a sense of humor that reminds of Ethan Coen’s many other iconic comedies. Other times, it’s weird for the sake of it, strange for the hell of it, and without the strong writing to make this entirely work. It’s absolutely been great to see what the Coen brothers can do independently of each other, and now seeing their solo narrative debuts, it’s especially compelling to break down what each individual brought to this collaboration. But now that Joel and Ethan have tested the waters on their own, Drive-Away Dolls sort of makes you glad that they’re reuniting in the near future. Drive-Away Dolls reminds of what made a Coen brothers film great without ever quite getting there. Hopefully, soon, we’ll see what their powers combined look like again after this diversion.
