Friends Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are each at a crossroad in their life, and they’ve decided to drive to Tallahassee to clear their minds. On their way they discover a mysterious package, one that will alter the course of their lives forever. These Drive-Away Dolls will be thrown into the ring with a group of dangerous criminals, and only their sheer will to live can save them.
In typical Ethan Coen (Writer-Director) fashion, Drive-Away Dolls uses a series of convenient, and incredibly silly plot points to drive the film forward. Time and time again something absurd (or obscene) happens that helps the film to move along, and while that may seem like something that I might become frustrated with throughout the course of the film, it is established early on that Drive-Away Dolls isn’t a film that you can take too seriously, allowing these moments to exist without heavy scrutiny. With this idea of cringe comedy existing from the early moments, Drive-Away Dolls manages not only to survive through some of those silly plot devices, but thrive as a result of them.
Much of Drive-Away Dolls is driven by sex, and Qualley and Viswanathan (but primarily Qualley) are responsible for ensuring that this remains alive and well throughout the course of the film. I’ve expressed my discontent with other recent films that play with the idea of sex just to string viewers along, to give them something to look forward to–but Drive-Away Dolls approaches the subject a bit differently. Again, as a result of Coen and Co-Writer Tricia Cooke establishing the idea that the film shouldn’t be taken too seriously in the early going, sex as a primary plot point isn’t offputting. The film-watching world knows, at this point, of the expertise of Coen, and he once again proves his chops throughout the duration of Drive-Away Dolls.
While Drive-Away Dolls is set in 1999, we get a series of psychedelic scenes in which a bunch of nonsense (or what often seems like nonsense) takes place. While these instances are technically flashbacks, Coen effectively establishes a tertiary story that runs parallel to Jamie and Marian’s odyssey. The reality is that, regardless of all of the work that went into developing the primary story, allowing it not to be taken too seriously, the humor and some of the heavier content has the potential to become overwhelming for some viewers–so, while that aforementioned tertiary story isn’t essential to the plot, I believe that it’s essential to the viewing experience.
Drive-Away Dolls, by its conclusion, is contorted into something of a political satire–and with that comes a level of exaggeration that transcends the entirety of the film. Obviously Coen is presumed to be the most important figure in regard to the development of the film, especially being the multi-hyphenate that he is in regard to the project, but I don’t think that it can be stressed enough how important he is to this film’s total success. Drive-Away Dolls depends on the exaggeration and incredibly dry humor to blend seamlessly, and Coen ensures that this happens (but obviously we can’t discount individuals like Cooke, Qualley, and Viswanathan for their roles as well).
Drive-Away Dolls is, in just about every way, a film that you’d expect from Coen–one that sort of plays with the boundaries of reality. The theme and the tone of the film are established in the early going, and there’s no looking back from that point on. Through a wild narrative and crude and incredibly dry humor, Drive-Away Dolls does entertain throughout its majority. The success of the film ultimately rests on the shoulders of Coen, but Viswanathan and Qualley are most certainly the stars of the show.
Directed by Ethan Coen.
Written by Ethan Coen & Tricia Cooke.
Starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Matt Damon, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10 = WATCH IT FOR FREE
