Dri­ve-Away Dolls review – a future mid­night screen­ing staple

There’s a clas­sic episode of Star Trek where a trans­porter mal­func­tion caus­es Cap­tain Kirk to be split into two copies of him­self, each reflect­ing dif­fer­ent parts of his per­son­al­i­ty: one is aggres­sive and impetu­ous; the oth­er meek and sub­servient. These traits are accen­tu­at­ed by their sep­a­ra­tion from each oth­er to a com­ic degree. We’re see­ing a real-life instance of this with the pro­fes­sion­al split of Joel and Ethan Coen, who haven’t made a film togeth­er since 2018’s The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs. Joel’s The Tragedy of Mac­beth repli­cates the broth­ers’ capac­i­ty for sturm-und-drang dra­ma as in Miller’s Cross­ing or No Coun­try for Old Men. Absent entire­ly from that film was the recog­nis­able Coens sense of humour; Ethan, thank­ful­ly, brought it with him when he went. Dri­ve-Away Dolls rev­els in ridicu­lous­ness, allow­ing noth­ing seri­ous get in the way of a good joke.

The film begins at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, with two les­bian friends — shift­less Jamie (Mar­garet Qual­ley) and uptight Mar­i­an (Geral­dine Viswanathan) — tak­ing a road trip to Flori­da after a bad breakup rips through their social cir­cle. They’re unaware that the trunk of their rental car con­tains items cov­et­ed by ruth­less crim­i­nals and cor­rupt politi­cians, wrap­ping the pair up in a dead­ly conspiracy.

They’re unaware for most of the movie, in fact. The first half most­ly sees Jamie try­ing to get Mar­i­an laid, as the two bum­bling goons pur­su­ing them meet a series of absurd dead ends. The gals’ con­stant good for­tune becomes a joke in itself, like when Buster Keaton nar­row­ly avoids being hit by a train. The film piles on car­toon­ish absur­di­ties with reck­less aban­don. The edit tran­si­tions between scenes with a series of trashy screen wipes straight out of Win­dows Movie Mak­er, each one more ridicu­lous than the last. Then it intro­duces 70s-inspired kalei­do­scop­ic inter­sti­tials fea­tur­ing CGI laugh­ing skulls and Miley Cyrus. Clear­ly, this is a film with no fear of kitschiness.

Speak­ing of fear­less­ness, the film is remark­ably frank in its depic­tion of sex, with none of the tedious neutered yearn­ing which haunts so much queer (and par­tic­u­lar­ly les­bian) cin­e­ma. Like 2023’s Bot­toms, Dri­ve-Away Dolls shows that les­bians can be horny too, and not just in an abstract or cod­ed way. While it’s become a bit trite to cel­e­brate films for sex-pos­i­tiv­i­ty, there’s a refresh­ing direct­ness here to the way sex is depict­ed as part of every character’s life.

The film’s tone relies on a com­mit­ted cast. Qual­ley goes for broke with a com­i­cal­ly thick Texas accent, lay­ing thick every ​“sug­ar” and ​“hon­ey-babe”. Viswanathan is more sub­dued by com­par­i­son, bring­ing amus­ing notes of smug­ness to her character’s intro­ver­sion. In one of the film’s fun­ni­est images, Qual­ley brings a hookup back to their motel room and finds Viswanathan sit­ting bolt upright in bed read­ing Hen­ry James, look­ing like Nor­ma Bates and groan­ing an almost sin­is­ter ​“good evening.” Coen and Cooke mine gold, both comedic and roman­tic, out of this odd cou­ple dynamic.

While Joel Coen’s solo direc­to­r­i­al effort seemed to be miss­ing his brother’s play­ful­ness and whim­sy, his broth­er isn’t suf­fer­ing from a sim­i­lar absence. Dri­ve-Away Dolls bursts with the man­ic ener­gy of a Looney Tunes car­toon. Joel may be shack­led to dark, roil­ing dra­mas, but Ethan is mak­ing the film of a free man. It’s a rare treat these days to see some­thing so breezy and uncon­cerned with trend-chas­ing in cin­e­mas. It will sure­ly be lost in the shuf­fle of big­ger releas­es this year, but I look for­ward to see­ing it at mid­night screen­ings for years to come.