- Starring
- Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Matt Damon
- Director
- Ethan Coen
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Action, Comedy, Thriller
- Release date
- February 23, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Drive-Away Dolls marks Ethan Coen’s first solo feature film. Born in Minnesota, together the Coen brothers have crafted a diverse and critically acclaimed body of work since their debut feature, “Blood Simple,” in 1984. With a unique blend of dark humor, sharp dialogue, and a penchant for exploring the eccentricities of human nature, the Coen Brothers have left an indelible mark on cinema. Their filmography includes iconic works such as “Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski,” and “No Country for Old Men,” which earned them Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. The Coen Brothers consistently challenge cinematic conventions, creating a legacy that reflects their artistic innovation and narrative prowess in the world of filmmaking.
Drive-Away Dolls
When Jamie’s girlfriend throws her out for cheating, Jamie and her mousey friend Marian decide to go on a road trip to Tallahassee for a fresh start. Too bad for them that they took the way wrong car. Now, the two will have to deal not only with Jamie’s complete lack of self-awareness and inhibition but also with the mysterious and violent men bent on retrieving some very special packages hidden in the ladies’ vehicle.
If you were ever curious which of the Coen Brothers was the talented one, Drive-Away Dolls doesn’t help Ethan Coen’s case. Dolls is a slow-paced slog that inexpertly moves from one scene to the next as its two leads babble banal dialogue that vacillates between humorless attempts at humor and shallow attempts at depth; all brought together with underdeveloped supporting characters and a plot that had to have been conceived of while stoned.
Andie MacDowell’s daughter, Margaret Qualley, plays Jaime, the free-spirited lesbian with a sex drive as over the top as her cartoonish southern accent and hammy performance. It’s a testament to the difference good material and a quality director with vision make when comparing Qualley in this embarrassment to her turn as Pussycat in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.
It’s not that Qualley is bad so much as her character, much like the rest of the film, is poorly written with a meaningless point of view that writers Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke manually churn like butter into every line of dialogue as they fumble from one scene to the next.
The rest of the cast doesn’t fare much better. The villains are underdeveloped goons with no chemistry and so little screentime as to easily be forgotten between scenes, and there are coffee mugs more interesting than the character arc of Qualley’s costar Geraldine Viswanathan’s, Marian.
In a film this bad, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where Drive-Away Dolls fails hardest. However, one of its biggest shortcomings is that it lacks the polish synonymous with Coen Brother films. Instead, it feels like a half-baked, underdeveloped attempt at making a lesbian propaganda film in a poor approximation of the Coen Brothers. It’s far more interested in extolling the wonders of sapphic love than it is with storytelling and spends large chunks of time its 1h 24m runtime doesn’t have to spare devoted to overlong and sometimes graphic lesbian sex scenes (not the hot kind) while ignoring things like plot and character development or quality dialogue, or even style.
Ultimately, Drive-Away Dolls is a shallow and embarrassingly bad film that will likely be praised for its “bravery” but is better left unwatched and forgotten. If this is the best that Ethan Coen has to offer, he should hold onto his brother’s coattails as though his career depends on it, because if this is any indication of his abilities, it 100% does.
WOKE ELEMENTS
Pride Parade
- Drive-Away Dolls is a 1h 24m LGBTQRSTUV celebration barely couched in the trappings of a film.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
11 comments
Fred
February 21, 2024 at 3:01 pm
Does anyone else see the irony of a white man doing a lesbian propaganda film? Or is that just me? I thought white men were evil. Can white men really do lesbian propaganda right? Based on this movie, no. But nobody else in Hollywood seems to know how to do it either.
Maybe just watch Brokeback Moutain instead, but then again, white men are the leads of that movie. So, next big Hollywood movie, Brokeback Mountain 2, this time with 2 black lesbians. The movie practically writes itself. Two strong black girl bosses with sass go glamping in a posh Hollywood hotel and then proceed to lecture all the evil white people they run into and then everyone turns gay and happily ever after. Now that’s the movie The Coen Brother should have made.
Bunny With A Keyboard
February 21, 2024 at 4:52 pm
I’ve said before that woke movies have all the negatives of porn, but lack anything that people who watch porn are looking to see. Have I been proven right yet?
Charles
February 26, 2024 at 6:06 pm
Seen the trailer at the cinema..knew this was gonna be disaster wooe film and after reading the review…YUP
James Carrick
February 26, 2024 at 6:31 pm
I think it’s better that I went into the screening cold. At least I didn’t have to be filled with dread on the drive there.
Bunny With A Keyboard
February 26, 2024 at 6:45 pm
For all I feel sad that a decent amount of content is locked behind a paywall (I am a poor little bunny rabbit), I absolutely understand that you deserve to be paid for going through these horrible movies and shows.
Henry and Samuel
February 28, 2024 at 7:41 pm
WOKE MARVEL IS OUT OF HAND! BASED AND RED
Bunny With A Keyboard
February 28, 2024 at 8:26 pm
It’s hardly just Marvel, though you’re not wrong. There are scant few shows that aren’t just woke garbage at this point.
Igor Lee Abdullah Smith
March 11, 2024 at 4:24 pm
Lesbian films are for lesbians and weak minded women who like to pretend they are because the Woke are pushing the propaganda hard.
The audience for this garbage is tiny, so I’m not surprised this one bombed hard and lost money.
W
March 15, 2024 at 2:47 pm
The only good “lesbian film” that I’ve seen is David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I absolutely love that movie, and both female leads are lesbian. But it’s never forced down your throat, and it isn’t even revealed until more than halfway into the film that they’re in a relationship. Its a solid mystery movie… that’s not woke. ###### wokeness!
Sweet Deals
March 13, 2024 at 9:39 pm
I try to avoid LGBT content when I can, but whenever I encounter a lesbian narrative, either fictional or autobiographical, I’m often convinced that the person trying to persuade me that lesbianism is “brave” is not only lying to me, but is also lying to herself.
When I see a lesbian narrative, the woman usually says that her life was depressing and dead-ending until she decided to abandon her previous life and start dating a woman, and then she became empowered and everything’s better for her. What I think is that women who choose to become lesbians are emotionally vulnerable; many of them have backgrounds involving being abused or struggling with failed relationships because of their own immaturity. They’re desperate to be loved, or desperate to gain control over their lives. They’ll attach themselves to each other because they aren’t fully aware of what a healthy loving relationship is, and either use each other as emotional crutches or they are control freaks who take advantage of one another. And they use lots of loving smiles and slobbering to conceal the very real emotional problems lurking below the surface.
In short, I believe that no woman in her right mind would ever willfully date another woman, and women who willfully date other women typically aren’t in their right minds. They’re emotionally unhealthy people who enter unhealthy relationships for unhealthy reasons. That’s what I usually see, anyway. I wonder if other people who see lesbian propaganda see it the same way that I do.
Bunny With A Keyboard
March 13, 2024 at 10:17 pm
For me, I don’t see coming out as gay as brave because it’s clearly seen as a positive by various celebrities, media, and politicians in power.
If you want to see brave, watch what happens when someone comes out as Christian or Republican.