Drive-Away Dolls Review
Theatrical Movie Review - Comedy - LGBTQ
When Joel Coen directed “The Tragedy of Macbeth” in 2021, it was a solo project. Brother Ethan said that he wanted a break from the grind of making movies and that when he returned to it, he wanted to work on some things he had. Apparently, one of the projects that he was anxious to get to was the script for “Drive-Away Dolls,” which he co-wrote with his wife, Tricia Cooke. It has come to be and is now playing in theaters.
The movie follows Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), two women driving from Philadelphia to Tallahassee. Marian wants to get away from the grind at work, and Jamie wants to get away from her failed relationship with Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). As they travel, they discover some items in the trunk that turn their joy ride into more of a metaphorical car crash, resulting in being chased by a group of goons trying to recover the goods.
I was anxious to see this movie, and while parts of it had me laughing out loud, the overall effect left something to be desired. There are many complaints about movies being too long, but at just 84 minutes, I wish “Drive-Away Dolls” had been a little bit longer.
There weren't any bad performances. Feldstein is incredible in everything she does. Qualley and Viswanathan were so much fun together. Qualley definitely had some of the best dialogue, but Viswanathan plays a square so wholeheartedly that she was my favorite. Joey Slotnick and CJ Wilson were great as the goons and were probably some of the best characters we had. Colman Domingo, as the heavy, was menacing in precisely the right way. Everyone on screen was a delight to watch.
But all of the characters felt flat. I understand that a lot of Coen characters tend to be a bit more like caricatures than real people, but these felt exceptionally one-dimensional. There were a couple of side adventures that happened with Jamie and Marian on their way to Tallahassee that could have fleshed out those characters more, but instead, they just played to type. The arc for the two characters didn’t feel earned to me. I wanted to see them grow, not just watch them start to behave differently because it was the time in the movie when they should do that.
There were also some directing choices that felt odd to me. There are long scene transitions that feel disconnected from the film. We find out later that they aren’t, but we don’t discover that until late in the film, and in an already short movie, they take up valuable time that could have been used for character development.
There's a lot of humor and fun in this movie, and I'm all for more queer stories that aren't soaked in trauma. But “Drive-Away Dolls” felt like it drove away and just left dolls instead of characters.
This review originally appeared in The Dominion Post on February 25, 2024.