Ethan Coen is primarily known as one-half of the Coen Brothers. He and his brother Joel have directed more than their fair share of films over the last few decades, such as Raising Arizona, Fargo, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and No Country For Old Men, among others. They have won four Academy Awards together. Then Joel broke off and started doing films on his own, The Tragedy of Macbeth. Now it’s time for Ethan to go on his own as he directs Drive Away Dolls as his first outing without his brother beside him in the director’s chair.

Jaime (Margaret Qualey) is a permiquas young lady who likes to drink and party. While her close friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is more responsible and straight-laced. Together they decide they need a break from Philadelphia where they reside and go to Tallahassee,  Florida. The problem is they inadvertently get embroiled in an illegal negotiation via the car they are driving, and end up being tracked by two bloodthirsty thugs. They have to use their wits and the stupidity of the thugs to survive their encounter.

Ethan Coen with his brother has been known as a director who infuses comedy in with drama. The combination of these two genres has benefitted them over the years. This film tries to incorporate comedy with drama as well. There are some pretty funny moments that had me cracking up. Such as an incident with Qualey’s character’s ex Sukie (Beanie Feldstein)  beating the hell out of one of the thugs when they came looking for the pair of girls. That was just one of the funny scenes.

Coen was able to ensemble a great cast for this film even though a couple of big-name actors are only in what I would say are glorified cameos. Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon are only in one scene apiece but they were pretty memorable scenes.  Colmon Domingo’s character Cheif is the boss of the two thugs and Bill Camp plays Curlie and owns a car delivery service where the girls get their car from him. Domingo and Camp’s characters have a funny altercation with one another that helps set the main plot of the film. 

Part of the film is a road trip movie as the two pairs of characters, the girls and the thugs, are both on the road from Philadelphia to Tallahassee. This is where a lot of the character development happens between the pairs of characters. The girls get mad at each other and get back to being friends again in the process of this trip. They stay at various hotels and visit some bars specifically for women who are looking to date other women. There is an LGBT element to this film from the very get-go. The thugs are different kinds of guys who do things vastly different from one another. Their differences come to a head by the end of the film.

There was one part of the movie that was strange to me and that was some psychedelic scenes that broke up the rest of the film. These scenes would come in randomly and had Miley Cyrus in a couple of them. They just didn’t work for me in the context of the movie but by the end of the film I was scratching my head and it took me a little while to figure out why they were there in the first place. They were just strange scenes and the decision to add them to the film was a bit questionable.  

Drive Away Dolls is the prime example of a film that had a funny trailer and once I actually sat down to watch the movie it wasn’t as good as the trailer was. The funny scenes were far and in between and the rest of the movie was just okay for me. The cast was fine but this wasn’t at the level of other Coen Brothers collaborations. They seem to work better as a pair as far as I am concerned. It makes sense that this film was moved from September 2023 to February 2024. There isn’t much going on right now. This may be able to capitalize on a counter-programming angle. 

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen