Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ on Peacock, Ethan Coen's unquenchably horny lesbian road movie

Dunno about you, but if I’m going to watch a throwaway lark, I’d rather it be by one of the Coen brothers than anyone else. Cue Drive-Away Dolls, a solo outing directed by Ethan Coen, co-writing with his wife Tricia Cooke. You may recall, Joel Coen helmed 2022’s The Tragedy of MacBeth, and although the sibling duo who helmed all-timers like The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona, and an all-timer among all-timers, Fargo, they haven’t really “broken up”; they may work together again, but Ethan and Tricia are already filming the follow-up to Drive-Away, both films being part of their planned “lesbian B-movie trilogy.” Both star Margaret Qualley, who here teams with Geraldine Viswanathan for some road-movie silliness that feels really slapped together, and might just be all the better for it.

The Gist: We open on a nervous man played by Pedro Pascal, the first of a few high-profile cameos that I WON’T GIVE AWAY, SO DON’T CALL THE SPOILER COPS ON ME. He has something in a suitcase that scary men want, and by “scary men” I mean “eccentric weirdos,” since this is a Coen movie, and their movies are always bursting at the seams with those types. Cut to the bedroom of Jamie (Qualley) and Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), who are really going at it. Hard! Like, with lots of screaming and aggressive face-sitting. To call Jamie a horndog is to offhandedly remark that the totality of outer space is pretty big. She’s just unquenchable. Always fire-hot and ready to zoooooooooom. It’s 1999 in Philadelphia, and I don’t know what that really has to do with anything, but you feel like Jamie is still hopping on top of anything that moves here 25 years later. Good for her. She lives life until everything falls apart and she keeps on humping away atop the ash and ruins. 

Jamie’s good friends with Marian (Viswanathan), and ends up crashing on her couch after Jamie and Sukie have a falling-out. Now, where Jamie lets it all hang out – a big reason why Sukie socked her one and gave her the boot – Marian keeps it all in, nice and tight. Very buttoned-up, she is. And that dynamic is perfect for what now? A road trip, bro! Marian’s aunt lives in Tallahassee, so they get a “drive-away” car-delivery gig, which is a loosey-goosey plot device that allows them to unassumingly drive the wrong car cross-country with the aforementioned Pascal Suitcase hidden in the trunk. More on that in a second, because Marian’s plan is to just drive straight down but they end up doing Jamie’s plan, which is to hit a bunch of lesbian dives along the way so Jamie can get laid for the zillionth time and Marian can (hopefully) get laid for the first time in a long time. Marian is reluctant to enjoy anything ever, but Jamie’s persuasive. “This is going to be F-U-N-N fun!” Jamie says, and then they hop in the Dodge and R-U-N-N-O-F-T.

Of course the guys who hid the briefcase – guys led by a chap played by Colman Domingo – want their briefcase back. Off go two thugs (CJ Wilson and Joey Slotnick) bickering and bickering as they trail our protag ladies, who aren’t getting along very well because Marian would rather read Henry James in a fleabag motel than host random ladies for ladysex like Jamie does. Meanwhile, we get some weird psychedelic interludes featuring [REDACTED], and they make sense eventually I think, so just go with it. Some nutty shit happens, stakes are raised, filmmaker indulgences are indulged, we wonder what the hell is the case, and are we laughing all the way? Yeah, pretty much.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There are moments when Drive-Away Dolls drafts on past Coen goofiness – especially Lebowski and Raising Arizona – and an argument could be made that it’s an entire movie inspired by the dildo-chair scene in Burn After Reading. 

Performance Worth Watching: I like Qualley’s loony energy here, but without Viswanathan as her character foil, the film wouldn’t have a little bit of soul to counterbalance the silliness, and the violence, and the sex.  

Memorable Dialogue: Jamie’s treatise on romantic love, via Marian’s inability to find it yet: “I’m not certain, honey darlin’, that you have ever reached deep inside any orifice to scoop out your soul and fling it shamelessly at a fellow human being and humiliate yourself and grovel and weep and feel your ego completely disintegrate, otherwise known as the glory of love.”

Sex and Skin: Tons of it! This is a significantly raunchy film! Rejoice!

Our Take: Nobody in their right mind is going to mistake this ramshackle-ass movie for anything more than a frequently amusing trifle and a celebration of absurdity, in fiction and maybe almost but not necessarily in real life. Drive-Away Dolls is evidence that Ethan may have been the fuel for the Coens’ purest and zaniest comedies, which stretch reality into weird and wonderful nonconformist shapes. The people within the world of Drive-Away are larger than life, speaking in an elevated manner, making each other scream in pain and/or ecstasy (or wherever the twain shall meet) and chasing the silliest MacGuffin on record. You might be able to guess what it is, but that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.

There’s no point to the movie other than to make us laugh, and if it doesn’t land every joke, it lands enough of them to quell any criticisms you killjoys out there might drum up. Maybe there could be a little more dramatic oomph to our leads, but Qualley and Viswanathan play off their character types in a warm and endearing manner while finding some wiggle room for development, and firmly hitting their comedic marks. Sure, there’s some vague politics beneath the rickety floorboards here, because the film is very incredibly unapologetically gay, and that’s political of course, for reasons that seem super extra stupid in the context of this movie. Are the dog-humping gags, jokes about juke joints and the line “These penises are trouble, Jamie” also political? Maybe, only if you decontextualize them, but I’ve already had enough of this attempt to plumb Serious Thoughts from a near-freeform romp. I just want to laugh, so I’ll probably just watch Drive-Away Dolls again.

Our Call: Yes, the Coens are still loons, and not loving them for it is not an option. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.