A street journey. A mixture-up. A quick-talking hero, vulnerable to tossing off bewilderingly verbose sentences. Some criminals who run the gamut from eccentric to psychotic to painfully inept. (Typically, they’re all three directly.) Dangerously sudden violence. Dangerously darkish humor. Dangerously outrageous hairdos. The sensation that you simply’re watching a classic movie noir story run via a Looney Tunes filter. You might be within the presence of a Coen brothers film — whaddaya want, a street map?!
Really, some form of GPS system could be a blessing for each you, the viewer, and the makers of Drive-Away Dolls, considered one of whom is certainly a Coen. Alongside together with his brother Joel, Ethan Coen spent near 4 a long time as one half of a filmmaking duo that grew to become synonymous with a sure kind of moviegoing expertise. The work could be manic and comedic (Elevating Arizona, The Huge Lebowski, Burn After Studying), or menacing and head-scatchingly existential (Blood Easy, Miller’s Crossing, No Nation For Previous Males). In case you obtained fortunate, it might be each (Barton Fink, Fargo, A Critical Man). Even earlier than the siblings determined to pursue separate tasks behind the digital camera, Ethan had a vibrant artistic life exterior of the partnership, having written performs, poetry, and a group of brief tales. Jerry Lee Lewis: Hassle in Thoughts, the 2022 doc on the rock & roll legend he made together with his spouse/editor Tricia Cooke, instructed he might work a pleasant aspect hustle as a portrait artist if he needed to.
This second collaboration between Coen and Cooke, from a script the 2 had labored on collectively again within the late Nineties, treads into some extraordinarily recognizable territory. It’s Philadelphia, 1999. A person (Pedro Pascal) walks right into a bar. He’s carrying a briefcase. When the individual he meets doesn’t present up, he geese into an alleyway and is forcibly relieved of his bundle. Quickly, a well-tailored gangster (we love you, Colman Domingo) and two dim-witted thugs (C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick) present up at a enterprise that makes a speciality of hiring of us to drive automobiles to a sure location. They’re going to ship the briefcase to a shopper in Tallahassee, Florida. Can the proprietor go them the merchandise they despatched over the day earlier than, fairly please?
Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon in ‘Drive-Away Dolls.’
Wilson Webb / Working Title / Focus Options, 2
The issue is, the store’s simply confused proprietor (Invoice Camp) thought that two younger ladies who got here in earlier, asking a couple of “drive-away” trip to the Sunshine State, have been those making the drop. The crooks now have to seek out the duo who unwittingly took off with the bundle and retrieve it. That is the half the place you count on an incoming slew of sizzling interstate pursuits, shut calls, the kind of ha-ha-bang-bang that’s change into a Coen-production signature, thrills, spills and/or some chills. Added components could embody a grimy politician, a severed head in a basket, and quite a lot of intellectual references — say, the novels of Henry James — butting up in opposition to a blizzard of dick jokes. The legacy of the Plaster Casters performs a component. Beanie Feldstein exhibits up as a perpetually indignant cop. Matt Damon drops by for a cameo, due to an business mandate stating that one out of each 5 motion pictures should function a Matt Damon cameo.
There’s one factor that separates Drive-Away Dolls from the same old pulp-fiction deconstruction template that the brothers had perfected previously, nevertheless. It’s the extraordinary quantity of superb, out-and-proud queerness that’s embedded into the story, one thing that you simply’d be at pains to seek out of their earlier work. Cooke identifies as a lesbian (she and Ethan have what they‘ve deemed a nontraditional relationship) and had talked about at a latest Q&A that she began throwing round concepts for this partially out of frustration over not seeing a sure kind of illustration onscreen. She’s additionally namechecked Russ Meyers’ exploitation masterpiece Quicker, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! as a touchstone, and you may see the affect of a sure period’s primal-screen pleasures throughout this. The unique title, Cooke stated, was Drive-Away Dykes, which purposefully suggests the second half of a Forty-Deuce grindhouse double invoice. Judges would’ve additionally accepted Drive-In Dolls as nicely. It takes place within the Nineties and advantages from the twenty first century’s sex-positivity, however wow, does this have late Sixties/early Seventies B film envy throughout it!
Nevertheless it’s the 2 LGBTQ lead characters, younger and inadvertently on the run, that present what little gasoline is within the tank right here. Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a bookish introvert and hasn’t been intimate with anybody since a breakup with a girlfriend a number of years prior. Her finest pal, Jamie (Margaret Qualley), is a Texas ex-pat in Philly who lives for impromptu hook-ups and physique pictures on the native bar. The very first thing that Jamie does after she invitations herself alongside to Marian’s journey south to see her mother is map out each LGBTQ hotspot on the route. She’s decided to ensure her pal enjoys the extra carnal aspect of life on the journey, be it in a small city’s resident lesbian hangout or at a feminine soccer workforce’s basement occasion. It is a film that’s something however shy about intercourse and is a robust contender for having essentially the most dildo-related punchlines per capita than any movie launched within the final 75 years. The strain between these younger ladies is much less will-they-or-won’t-they, a lot as how steamy issues would possibly get. (Spoiler: Actually steamy at one level.)
So why does Drive-Away Dolls consistently really feel prefer it’s behind the wheel of the unsuitable make and mannequin for its supposed vacation spot? A part of it’s the supply system — there’s no yet one more certified to make a Coenesque movie than a real Coen brother, but the combo of cracked noir tropes and a sapphic tackle a classic sexcapade flick feels just like the cinematic equal of a nasty blind date. Neither of the films happening right here syncs up, which makes the kooky crime components and the buddy-comedy storyline really feel like they’re jockeying for area. Solely Qualley appears to appreciate that she’s in a romp made by one half of the workforce behind O Brother The place Artwork Thou?, and is constantly attempting to amp up the Lone Star lilt, the amount and the rate of this variation on the screwball “dizzy dame” archetype. In the meantime, Viswanathan — as pleasant a comic book dynamo as you’ll discover nowadays — is given a mousy, uptight character that struggles to be even one-dimensional.
The required fire-and-ice chemistry by no means takes. Neither, for that matter, do the psychedelic interludes straight out of a Fillmore live performance and flop-sweat makes an attempt at blood-flecked zaniness. You’re left enduring a bumpy trip on a street to nowhere, in different phrases, and neither the movie’s wane familiarity nor its welcome, pro-smut good intentions could make the journey worthwhile. We weren’t joking concerning the GPS — Drive-Away Dolls is a mash-up that wants a way of course, and badly.
