Drive-Away Dolls

In cinemas now

Few directors are as synonymous with the crime caper as the Coen brothers, which means that Drive-Away Dolls is hindered by expectation from its outset.

The film is Ethan Cohen’s second as a solo director and akin to some of his and brother Joel’s more puerile work such as Burn After Reading and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Co-written with his wife Tricia Cooke (who Cohen has described as the picture’s co-director in all but name), Drive-Away Dolls is ostensibly a road trip tale that is focused on two young lesbians (played by Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan) whose attempts to elope to Tallahassee quickly become entwined in the machinations of a group of dim-witted criminals.

It’s clear to see that, on aesthetics alone, this is intended as a homage to a specific sub-genre of filmmaking (John Waters has been cited as an inspiration) and that Cohen and Cooke are attempting to make a picture that is both entertaining and sexually liberated. The problem is that Drive-Away Dolls is neither.

Despite the best efforts of Qualley and Viswanathan (who have respectively excelled in projects such as Maid and Blockers), the screenplay is light on laughs and tries far too hard to be audacious, instead coming across as exactly what it is - an attempt by two middle-aged people to imagine how young queer people have sex. Even cameos from Matt Damon, Miley Cyrus, and Pedro Pascal fail to save the day.

It’s perhaps unsurprising to learn that Drive-Away Dolls was originally announced in 2007, as it has the feel of a project that has been in development limbo for some time. Given how underwhelming the final output is, it’s hard to dispute the notion that it’d have been better off left there.