When Joel Coen made his The Tragedy of Macbeth it was more than a movie, it was the test of whether a Coen Brother could succeed on their own. The two had been linked since the start of their careers through good movies and bad, through directing and even through writing movies for other people. In 2019 they indicated a split-up, seemingly through Ethan’s desire to focus on theatre. Joel powered ahead with his Shakespeare adaptation and it wound up being very good. Ethan meanwhile eventually came back to the filmmaking fold sans Joel -he made his solo debut with a Jerry Lee Lewis documentary, and now his own narrative feature -Drive-Away Dolls. And while it’s certainly unfair to compare to Macbeth (the movies have nothing in common despite broadly representing somewhat curiously the two kinds of tones the Coens like to work in), it is in some respect unavoidable given how little we’ve seen of these creatives separately. It’s also unfortunate because it then seems to reflect poorly on Ethan.
Drive-Away Dolls has that Coen DNA to it unmistakably, but it only accentuates where the movie fails to live up to the kinds of broad idiosyncratic comedies like Raising Arizona or O Brother Where Art Thou that the movie is clearly intended to be a cousin to. As much as the script by Ethan and his wife Tricia Cooke retains some of that intuitive wit so customary of the Coens’ voice, and as much as the premise may be curious, the film itself is often awkward and unwieldy to take in.
Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan play Jamie and Marian, two lesbian friends in 1999 Philadelphia who go on a road trip together to Tallahassee in the aftermath of Jamie’s messy break-up due to her frequent infidelities. A mix-up at a drive-away car service results in them taking a car smuggling some secretive criminal cargo meant for another client en route to Tallahassee. Soon they are being pursued by goons sent to retrieve the goods on behalf of a high-profile Republican politician.
The dumb criminal mix-up is a classic Coen Brothers scenario, and the core idea is a simple but solidly funny and promising one. You can see the really good movie behind a lot of the scenes here, the interesting character dynamics and the surreal weirdness of this world. However that is also true of The Ladykillers, and this movie in its worst moments is about as obnoxious as that. The script, though clever, is beset by a tone of arrogance and possibly careless indulgence pertaining both to its plot and choice of subject matter. Coen is cushioned a little by the time period and the fact his bisexual wife co-wrote the screenplay, but still the lesbian material of the film is often stereotypical and dated -in that way that would have been just fine in the era of But I’m a Cheerleader but feels rather rote and generic now. And not just in the fact that the word ‘d*ke’ is tossed around so frequently (and was originally part of the title of the movie), but in things like the nature of the sexual references -dildos are a running gag and astonishingly a major plot point, a trope-informed cheerleading squad, and the very fact that the two main characters represent opposing lesbian archetypes: excessively horny and repressed respectfully.
Viswanathan, as anyone who’s seen her work in recent years should agree, is a strong comedic actress -especially well-suited in fact to the kind of idiosyncratic humour emblematic of the Coens. She’s quite good in this, even if the part isn’t really written to her strengths. Qualley though is doing something completely different, and how much it works fluctuates over the course of the film. Where Viswanathan is more grounded and rational, Qualley is often cartoonishly rambunctious. She’s introduced in the midst of an extravagant sex scene, her spurts of ecstasy typical of several a redneck cliché. She plays the part with an accent that is essentially a Holly Hunter impression which in tandem with her flurry of horny jokes and broad reactions makes her contrast to her co-star look more and more like they are flung together from two separate genres of comedy. At the same time there are bits where they work well together, particularly as the film enriches their relationship as it goes along -Qualley’s performance even finds an equilibrium. But then around this there are beats like a confrontation in their hotel room with the bad guys that is just an unbroken spell of ludicrous screaming.
And I really think Coen is going for something quite broad and overwhelming -but his execution is entirely awkward. The charm of something like Raising Arizona isn’t present in this much more cynical story that has far tougher political aims (evangelical hypocrisy not the least of them), and seems to be invested in a kind of shock value that doesn’t quite come across in 2024. Lesbian sex is not the taboo it once was -nor are dick jokes, political sex scandals, even LSD seems to be treated as such. There are several bizarrely placed flashes through the movie to a drug trip involving Miley Cyrus as a hippie -their ultimate explanation is rather mundane. The film’s choice of macguffin and everything that goes into the climax feels brazenly forced -and much too awkward for Coen, who tackles it with his old attitude of eccentricity that only demonstrates firmly his limited capacity for this subject matter.
One of its greatest examples is in the two goons pursuing Jamie and Marian, played by Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson as quintessential incompetent Coen criminals (they even have a car-ride argument that is a vacant shadow of a classic scene from Fargo). Colman Domingo plays their handler, very confusingly directed, while Bill Camp as the drive-away dealer has a couple good deadpan moments, but a joke that is really undefined. Coen preferred character actors to big names on this film, though he still managed a dull cameo for Matt Damon (it’s essentially the same function his cameo served in No Sudden Move for Soderbergh, but not nearly as effective). Beanie Feldstein as Jamie’s ex is really the only effective casting in terms of what this tone demands.
But Coen subverts that as best he can. As the story bounces between these various characters, he effects the most bizarre scene transitions I’ve ever seen in a Coen film -literally knocking scenes out of place or forcefully dropping them on one another in abrupt visual devices that might be creative if not for how glaringly obnoxious they are, illustrated more often than not with cartoon sound effects. It stinks of something that is amusing to him and him alone. And indeed his direction seems very haphazard. Coen films usually have some degree of open-endedness when they don’t outright refuse a genuine resolution -Burn After Reading being probably the best example. But here not only are elements completely forgotten about (one of the things the girls are transporting, connected to the opening scene, has no bearing whatsoever), plot points are wrapped up in such a hasty manner it feels less an artistic choice than just complete disinterest. It is one of the most poorly structured movies Coen has ever made.
Again there is some fun to the writing, and one of the stronger story points concerning the development of these girls’ relationship actually plays rather well -a touch sweet in places even. But Drive-Away Dolls, which in the end does give itself back that original title (attaching Henry James’ name for a bit of misapplied class -a confounding literary reference point through the movie), is ultimately really inane, antiquated, uncoordinated, and honestly exasperating. I was so curious about an Ethan Coen solo effort, and though maybe it’s not fair to judge this movie as representative of the artistic capability of a filmmaker whose had a critical hand in several masterpieces, it looks like at this point at least Ethan needs Joel far more than Joel needs Ethan.
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