Few clever moments can’t salvage solo Coen brother project
Following in his big brother Joel’s footsteps, Ethan Coen steps outside the pair’s successful filmmaking partnership with Drive-Away Dolls, his first solo narrative feature. Unfortunately, Ethan doesn’t do as well as his brother did with his 2021 award-winning The Tragedy of Macbeth. Drive-Away Dolls probably won’t win any awards, but it’s a serviceable, if mostly forgettable, attempt at a retro, low-brow comedy.
Actually to say Ethan made the film solo isn’t entirely correct. Although the movie is his first feature made without his brother, Ethan co-wrote it with his wife, Tricia Cooke. The couple can’t seem to shake the Coen brothers’ vibe though: call Drive-Away Dolls Coen Light. The picture is imbued with familiar Coen brothers’ sensibilities and tropes, from the crime themes of Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men to the dry, deadpan dialogue of Raising Arizona and Fargo. The film never quite coalesces as something unique and different from the Coen oeuvre, even as Coen and Cooke try to spice things up. They make half their film a lesbian sex comedy, in a throwback to the no holds barred, American Pie style of raunch. The result feels less like something original and more like a film student’s homage to the brothers.
Take the black comedy crime caper plot, for instance. It’s 1999, and free-spirited, adventurous Jamie (Margaret Qualley) has just been dumped by girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) after cheating on her. Needing to get out of town, Jamie decides to join her BFF, the more straight-laced, zipped up Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), for a road trip from Philadelphia to visit Marian’s aunt in Tallahassee for some bird watching.
For the trip, the friends decide to use a “drive-away” service – a one way rental car to be delivered to a recipient in the destination city. Unbeknownst to Marian and Jamie, however, the trunk of the Dodge Aries that the surly clerk (Bill Camp, having fun with a small role) mistakenly gives them contains a mysterious suitcase. Of course this being a Coen movie, the case naturally is wanted by some super bad guys, who are now hot on Marian and Jamie’s trail. When our heroines discover the contents of the case, trouble and ostensible hilarity ensue.
The combination of sex comedy raunch and crime caper hijinks doesn’t always gel or generate laughs, although both plot elements have small clever moments. Matt Damon has a cameo as a right-wing Florida senator who has a vested interest in the contents of the suitcase, and he gets some of the picture’s biggest laughs. Viswanathan, Qualley, and especially Feldstein, as Jamie’s irritated cop ex-girlfriend, handle the Coen-infused sardonic dialogue with aplomb, and appear to be having a good time with the more boundary-pushing material. The only problem is that everyone involved with the film seems to think what we’re watching is way more interesting than it actually is. Coen and Cooke also make an odd choice to randomly drop in animation and psychedelic imagery, but these techniques add little to the proceedings, and feel tossed in just for the sake of being different.
None of this adds up to much besides a jaunty retread of better Coen brother movies–and better sex comedies, for that matter. Coen brother fans may want to check out the film for curiosity’s sake, but unless you’re big into the Coen style, you’re not missing much if you drive away from these dolls.
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Drive-Away Dolls opens today in Bay Area theaters.
