After her combative breakup with Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), Jamie (Margaret Qualley) is looking to get out of the city for a while to let things cool down between her and her ex.  She jumps at the chance of a road trip to Tallahassee with her friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) to go down and see her aunt.  They decide to save money and use a drive-away service for transportation, but they are mistakenly given the wrong car; one loaded with secret cargo that, if in the wrong hands, would have major consequences.  Unbeknownst to the girls, they are enjoying their trip through the American South while Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson) – the two who should have the car – are scrambling to recover the lost goods for their boss (Colman Domingo). 

Ethan Coen directs Drive-Away Dolls, a comedy of errors co-written with Tricia Cooke, his wife.  A breezy 84 minutes, the Focus Features release boasts a pretty wild story supported by energetic performances, snappy editing also provided by Cooke, and a playful camera operated by Ari Wegner.  It is the first solo narrative feature embarked on by Ethan and the second overall for the pair after Joel Coen’s adaptation of The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).  

Despite the short runtime, Drive-Away Dolls has a lot going on which is both a benefit and a curse as there is a lot that can help the film sink its hooks into audiences, and just as much that could turn them off.  The film is unapologetic and will mellow for no one, which is why the core duo of Qualley and Viswanathan are so important to the overall success of the film.  Qualley’s Jamie is bombastic and reeling from the breakup, looking to let off steam at a string of popular girl bars that are not too far off the pair’s proposed route while Marian would prefer to just make the drive, get the car to Tallahassee in one day as requested, and enjoy the time with her Aunt Ellis (Connie Jackson).  The chemistry between the two leads is great, and they share some incredible comic timing so that, while the humor can often feel one-note, the two actresses are able to sell the jokes well enough that audiences can forgive the repetitive formula and tone. 

Their chemistry is helped tremendously by the writing because, while the two have very different approaches to life, it is refreshing that the film is not punching down on the more prudish Marian. She is perfectly content to sit in her pajamas and read her book at night, and when she does branch out and entertain her sexuality, the film does not treat it as a betrayal of her character.  It is equal growth because as Marian becomes emboldened, Jamie becomes calmer. The philosophy of Drive-Away Dolls is surprisingly level, and it is that quality that sets the film apart from other comedies that lean just as, if not more, into the wild and absurd plot points as seen here. 

The maximalist approach to the comedy is another potential roadblock for audiences. It is too contained of a narrative to be an all-out farce à la Hail, Caesar! (2016), so this intense concentration takes some time to get acclimated to. Coupled with Qualley’s larger-than-life performance complete with an indescribable drawl and wildly psychedelic scene transitions that still do not entirely fit even within the total context of the film, Drive-Away Dolls is a strange film to nestle into.  

There is a familiarity, though, as all of these characters feel cut from the same cloth of the wider Coen worldview. Arliss and Flint might as well be Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare from Fargo (1996) and Curlie (Bill Camp), the owner of the car rental company, has all the trappings of a John Goodman role within the Coen’s lexicon; which is not to say that Camp does not excel in the bit part because he does. That same familiarity also works against the film because, as presented, it plays like only half of A Coen Brothers Film or as if a first-time filmmaker had based their debut endeavor after watching only the work of Joel and Ethan Coen; the echoes of the same story beats are there but somehow the heart is missing. To say it is a Coen Brothers movie as produced by AI would be unnecessarily rude, but the narrative convenience of setting the film in 1999 while peddling in some modern discourse about identity – even and especially in the superficial way as it is done here – feels cheap, lazy, and yes, a touch artificial. Safe for an incredible sequence featuring a young Marian (Samsara Leela Yett) during her sexual awakening, the film does not slow down to discuss what it means to be queer, but because the script does give Jamie plenty of room to vamp about her identity, those scenes stand out.

With that being said, there is still an incredible and exciting energy about the film, a mania that almost certainly comes from Cooke.  There is a sense of hope around these characters that is not afforded to many of the other figures who haunt the Coens’ world and that glimmer that life is not just an onslaught of unavoidable disappointment until death is honestly refreshing. When coupled with the third act setting of the film, the “free” state of Florida, to see a happy ending for these two characters is a relief for a modern audience who are weary of hearing about the modern political landscape of The Sunshine State.  

The conclusion of the film feels incredibly timely, and it is a real indictment that it would have still been quite timely some twenty years ago when the film was set though the specific machinations here somehow may be almost more scandalous given today’s Republican mindset. The girls unknowingly were transporting a hat box with the severed head of “The Collector” (Pedro Pascal) and a case of no less than 5 dildos cast from the members of prominent men including a Supreme Court Justice and Gary Channel (Matt Damon), a Florida senator with presidential aspirations. It is treated with a good dose of humor by the girls – again, a far cry from the gravity of how a mysterious case was treated in, say, No Country for Old Men (2007) – but for Senator Channel, the contents of the case spell the end of his political career.  This idea though is not just a zany, punchy MacGuffin to drive the film, but it really supports the views of the film that pleasure should be enjoyed, not stifled, and we should not be ashamed of who we are.  Channel is not necessarily concerned about the size or shape of his cast being known – and Production Designer Yong Ok Lee is quite kind to the assumingly scumbag senator – rather, he wants to hide the fact that at one point in his younger years, he had a drug-fueled night and engaged sexually with a free love hippie, Tiffany Plastercaster (Miley Cyrus), who made the duplicate.  In the senator’s eyes, and the eyes of his colleagues, embracing and enjoying the pleasures of life is something to be ashamed of and it needs to be stifled not just in his own life but the lives of his constituents as well. Don’t smoke pot. Don’t have sex. “Don’t say gay.” 

Drive-Away Dolls, while a fun time, still feels a little slight. Cooke’s editing is efficient to a fault, stripping away almost all of the interstitial material, but an efficiency on the page does not leave the world feeling unformed. We are left wanting more, but to do so would mean expanding the story which would risk alienating audiences given the abrasive nature of the film. It is a bold vision from its creators and, much like Jamie, it is unapologetic so this in-and-out, mile-a-minute pacing is the only way to approach the narrative. This means that the film is not going to wait around for audiences to get on board and so the first act does feel like a blind leap into the deep end, but the genuine heart of the story does shine through in the end. While the journey south may have seemed like a bit of a nightmare, Jamie and Marian’s return trek north – to the queer wonderland that is Massachusetts where women can not only marry but marry each other – feels like a sweet daydream.