“Drive-Away Dolls” certainly plays like it’s missing a Coen

Directed by Ethan Coen
Written by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke
Starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, and Matt Damon

Though the specifics change, the archetypical Coen brothers caper finds its main characters grappling, knowingly or unknowingly, with greater plots than they can grasp. It’s been that way from their debut feature, Blood Simple, which followed three sides of a love triangle determined to out-finagle each other in order to get out alive, the audience the only party who knows the full story. In The Hudsucker Proxy, it was a single good man against the full force of a company’s stock scam. It’s a throughline that connects Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, and Hail, Caesar!, to say nothing of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, and A Serious Man, which aren’t capers but still find their leads blindly feeling their way through some larger labyrinth, whether it’s the will of God, the anonymizing effect of capitalism, the machinations of a cartel, or the will of God (again).

At first glance, Drive-Away Dolls seems like it should fit that mold nicely. Directed by Ethan Coen in his first feature at-bat without his brother Joel – who himself stepped away from their partnership to direct 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, a film about (what else?) a murderous king railing against the designs of fate – its main characters are two young lesbians road-tripping across the American southeast in a rented car. In the trunk is a briefcase, its contents unknown, its previous owner murdered in the opening scene, and the men who killed him for it very keen to get it back. The stage is set. All that’s left is for everyone involved to act according to self-interest, and their already-competing motives will send the plot spiraling in ways nobody, including and especially the viewer, can see coming.

The story that ends up unfolding runs counter to those expectations, however. To be clear, this isn’t a bad thing; we should never spurn a film not following a blueprint. Had the Coens done that, we wouldn’t have gotten their largely sterling filmography. The problem in the specific case of Drive Away Dolls is that it eschews that blueprint in favor of something far simpler and seemingly assembled with a shrug. The first two acts take their time even nudging their narrative strands – one a romantic comedy, one a crime comedy, with occasional descents into campy horror – toward each other; they play pleasantly enough but totally disconnected, and given everything truly begins with Jamie (Margaret Qualley, Poor Things) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan, The Beanie Bubble) realizing they’re wrapped up in something, the result is a bunch of wheel-spinning until the halfway point. Even after this, the feeling isn’t that of a noose tightening, but of a script that’s realized it hasn’t laid enough groundwork to sustain it. Previously foreshadowed plot points are played off as jokes in the rush that follows, leaving its already abbreviated runtime littered with dropped threads.

But with that said, the stories taken independently prove capable of entertaining. The dialogue is as sharp as you’d expect from a film with the Coen name attached, and the characters delivering it are a delight to watch, especially a pair of mismatched enforcers, one a polite motormouth (Joey Slotnick, Plane) and the other a violent misanthrope (C.J. Wilson, The Trial of the Chicago 7), who are tasked with tracking Jamie and Marian. Every interaction between these two is gold, and they even make the rushed denouement of their dynamic work.

Equally solid is the chemistry between Qualley and Viswanathan, who on their own give life to what could have been one-note “vivacious” and “stuffy” characterizations respectively, and together sell a friendship between women who couldn’t be more different. Their scenes run the spectrum from funny as hell to surprisingly sweet, and watching their relationship evolve provides Drive-Away Dolls with its best moments. It’s here that Coen and co-writer Tricia Cooke (who is also married to Coen and has edited many of his and his brother’s finest films) arrive at their point.

At the core of their script is a story about repression and shame. In their estimation, it is a denial of one’s sexuality, especially queer sexuality, that can lead to feelings of alienation, and it is in embrace of this part of oneself that greater feelings of connection can be found. Identities are not one thing, set in plaster and never to wilt or wane, they are changeable, and there’s joy to be taken in that. So it goes here, as some open themselves up and embrace change, others deny themselves and find only pain. This being a Coen joint, said pain is usually delivered via gunshot.

Does all this redeem the script’s myriad flaws? I’d argue not, as it all takes place in the midst of a film that is first hesitant to start, then hurries to the finished line as if the good press it would receive for clocking in under ninety minutes outweighed the deeper look it owed its characters, its story, and the themes it broaches. It’s a minor work by every definition, but an entertaining one, and it proves once more than a Coen flick will always have something to say, even short a brother.

Rating: B-

Drive-Away Dolls is now playing in theaters.