Drive-Away Dolls is a zany comedy with an unapologetically attractive edge.
It’s nonetheless a thriller why the Coen brothers stopped working collectively. The pair made 18 films as a duo, from 1984’s Blood Easy to 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, setting a brand new commonplace for black comedy in American cinema. None of these films was flatly dangerous (though The Ladykillers comes shut, I don’t thoughts it); a lot of them have been masterpieces. Then, just a few years in the past, they break up up—allegedly, Ethan Coen had grown uninterested in the grind, although neither of them ever spoke about it on the document. With out him, Joel Coen made a visually hanging, emotionally austere Macbeth adaptation. Now, along with his new film, Drive-Away Dolls, Ethan has made a gonzo comedy about dopes with weapons chasing cheerful fools round dingy American motels in pursuit of a meaningless bag of loot. In different phrases, it’s a recognizable but new spin on the ineffable Coens system.
Drive-Away Dolls, which Ethan wrote along with his spouse, Tricia Cooke, is a gleefully anarchic caper with one foot on the planet of Looney Tunes. Positive, it lacks the dizzying visible panache of Ethan’s collaborations with Joel, and the plot—which careens from one ridiculous state of affairs to the subsequent on an aimless street journey via the swampy South—is sort of too piffling to summarize. However that pointlessness is a part of the appeal. Working solely 84 minutes lengthy and filled with chaotic plot twists, Drive-Away Dolls is an ideal winter trifle, sneaking onto screens nonetheless clogged with self-serious Oscar contenders.
The movie opens with a nigh-unspeakable act of violence being visited on a really perplexed criminal (performed by Pedro Pascal), who’s clinging to a stolen suitcase that holds one thing of large worth. From there, Drive-Away Dolls pivots to an odd-couple good friend pair of 20-something lesbians: Jamie (Margaret Qualley, sporting a twangy accent extra related together with her mom, Andie MacDowell) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan, one among Hollywood’s most enjoyable comedian actors since her breakout flip in 2018’s Blockers). Jamie is a free spirit, flitting from sexual conquest to sexual conquest whereas stringing alongside her girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein); Marian is standoffish and prickly, burying her nostril in Henry James novels even when she’s dragged to the membership.
After lastly being dumped by the tempestuous Sukie, Jamie decides to lug Marian on a street journey to Tallahassee, aspiring to hit up all the greatest homosexual bars on the best way down. Solely a sure sudden suitcase is planted within the trunk of their rental automotive, and an entire coterie of off-kilter characters is looking it down. The ensemble of Drive-Away Dolls is basically made up of character actors new to the Coen universe: Colman Domingo as a silky-voiced gangster, the nice Invoice Camp as a surly desk clerk, C. J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick as a pair of squabbling hit males. All would slot in any of the administrators’ previous movies, which have been populated with probably the most attention-grabbing faces they may pull out of the indie and theater worlds. Right here, they’re taking part in the anticipated roles of the bumbling Coen refrain: fumbling towards an inscrutable aim in backwoods America, the place even the lowliest bellhop can get in a very good joke or two.
However regardless that Drive-Away Dolls does summon so many basic Coen vibes, it’s enjoyable to determine the place it diverges, maybe because of Cooke’s affect: Ethan has the only real directing credit score, however he and his spouse have mentioned in interviews that they co-directed the film. Cooke has cited John Waters and Russ Meyer as influences, and whereas most Coen brothers films regard intercourse as both terrifying or surreal, Drive-Away Dolls has a trashier, unapologetically attractive edge. And though the Coens have put various luminous heroines on-screen—suppose Fargo or True Grit—Jamie and Marian are the form of appreciably flawed, semi-charmed goofballs which can be normally written as males within the brothers’ capers. Qualley and Viswanathan’s performances are pitched excessive; the previous does lots of antic monologuing. Once you consider them as being in the identical actuality as Nicolas Cage in Elevating Arizona, the movie snaps collectively.
Supposedly, the Coens are gearing up to reunite for an unannounced mission. I’ll be joyful to see these nutty brothers collaborate for the remainder of their lives, however Drive-Away Dolls has solely elevated my appreciation for his or her particular person instincts—on this case, the best way a zingy one-liner may be adopted by probably the most random act of brutality with out someway spoiling the tone. If Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke need to make extra dirty confections over the subsequent few years, I gained’t be upset.
