Mubi Monday: Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

Although Drive-Away Dolls is full of talent, some may say it's a bit too full (sickeningly so), it's hard to ignore the feeling that it's just not very good. Director Ethan Coen, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Tricia Cooke, seems to be a bit lost at sea, metaphorically speaking, and I am sure many will watch this and wish for Ethan to swiftly return to movies co-created with his brother, Joel.

Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are two friends who fancy a bit of a break after various stresses in their lives. They pick up a car that needs to be taken to Tallahassee, blissfully unaware that the trunk contains something very valuable that means a couple of amusingly incompetent "heavies" end up trying to track them down. As destiny creeps closer and closer to them, Jamie and Marian start to break down the thin barriers between them, and decide that it may be time to transform their friendship into something else.

The fact that this film is such a mess, and squanders so much potential talent, makes it clear to me that every main issue I have with it stems from the script. It’s not as funny or quirky as it thinks it is, nor is it half as clever or subversive as the films that Cohen and Cooke are clearly trying to emulate, and it feels like one wrong decision after another was made in transitioning the material from page to screen.

I have enjoyed both Qualley and Viswanathan in other movies, but they struggle to impress here. The former is particularly irksome in a role that desperately needed some more work to help viewers appreciate her viewpoint and approach to life a bit more. Colman Domingo isn’t used enough, his smooth-talking head honcho trying his best to resolve a situation that just keeps getting messier by the hour, and Joey Slotnick and C. J. Wilson are inept henchmen without enough wit in their abrasive antagonism towards one another. Matt Damon pops up in a cameo that allows you to say “there’s Matt Damon”, Miley Cyrus pops up fleetingly and allows you to say “there’s Miley Cyrus”, and the only cast member who actually gets to be as good as they can be is Beanie Feldstein (playing an angry ex-lover who follows our main characters in order to hand back an unwanted pet).

I was really hoping to like Drive-Away Dolls, considering everyone involved, but it started off weak and then never really developed into anything worthwhile. In fact, the finale of the film feels like a punchline and rushed resolution offered up by someone who thinks they are being edgy and hilarious while the reality is that they’re about a decade or so out of touch. It’s all a bit lazy and misguided, at best, as well as being strangely prudish and conservative, considering the aim of the film-makers was to make something very much at the other end of that spectrum.

At least it has a fairly short runtime, even if it feels as if it drags on longer. Don’t bother hitching a lift with these ladies though. Wait to see whatever better films they star in further down the line.

3/10

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