Ethan Coen is back for his second solo film with Drive-Away Dolls. Filled with high-profile cameos and a b-movie style, just how fun does it get?
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS is a wild ride! Taking B-movies as inspiration, DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS is at once edgy and off-beat, light-hearted and romantic. Written by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, this comedy caper follows Jamie, an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend, and her demure friend Marian who desperately needs to loosen up. In search of a fresh start, the two embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way.
Review
In Ethan Coen’s second solo directing, Drive-Away Dolls is an irreverent b-movie tale of a girls’ trip gone awry. Jamie and Marian are headed to Tallahassee, but when they go to get a car from a drive-away service, they end up with the bad guys’ car. The film says it’s set in 1999 but the timing of the film doesn’t match with the nature of Jamie and Marian’s open take on lesbian relationships and the antics that they both encounter during their journey.
The bad guys are your stereotypical inept villains who can’t rub two matches together to start a fire. As irreverent as the film tries to be, knowing it’s a b-movie, it never really comes to full potential in the end. Several big-name cameos occur during the film, but ultimately they must have cashed in some favors for Ethan because I am not sure being in this film was otherwise worth it.
Mixed into the story were scenes of psychedelic flashbacks to a certain friend of high-profile people whose skills in plaster-casting result in a briefcase full of incriminating evidence that everyone is after, for differing reasons. All of it makes zero sense and is so over the top that I just can’t find one redeeming quality in all of it. Perhaps if I rewatched it with a few drinks it would be more enjoyable.
Perhaps.
Courtesy of Focus Features 2024.
