DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS leaves you with a “how could this happen?“ feeling. Actually, everything is set up for a nice cinema success. Ethan Coen directed and wrote the screenplay, though without his brother Joel, but with editor Tricia Cooke who has been working with the Coens for decades. Three very likable young female stars are in the main roles: Margaret Qualley (POOR THINGS, “The Leftovers“) as overtly sexual chatterbox Jamie, Geraldine Viswanathan (CAT PERSON) as grumpy, uptight Marian and Beanie Feldstein (BOOKSMART) as the angry cop and slighted ex girlfriend Sukie. It’s about a trip to Tallahassee in Florida and a briefcase that the women find which many bad guys are after. A lesbian love triangle by the boomer jokesters for Gen Z – what can go wrong?

Pretty much everything. The problems begin with the Coenesque violent humor, which feels like it’s from a different era in this film. A man is murdered by a waitress with two corkscrews. Coen and Cooke cut from the dying man's screams to a sex scene in which Sukie screams similarly loudly while having an orgasm. Pauline Kael wrote in a text about BLOOD SIMPLE, the Coen Brother’s first film, that “the audience responds the crudeness of the hyperbole, and enjoys not having to take things seriously.“ This is the root of the joke of the 80s and 90s, when the Coens and Tarantino made it the paradigmatic comic form of the time. The sexual and bloody crudeness of this comedy, with its constant stream of dick and vagina jokes, wants to seem as provocative as Sarah Silverman’s sex and body jokes, but it’s feels like they’re just beating a dead horse.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy