Drive-Away Dolls delivers a enjoyable lesbian street journey and never far more

The Coen brothers’ filmography is tragically straight. Acclaimed for his or her stylistic breadth and wit, their movies are wealthy and keen to play with gender roles in ways in which welcome queer readings — the screwball hijinks of The Hudsucker Proxy and the winking choreography behind Channing Tatum’s dance numbers in Hail, Caesar! are among the many many playful thrives the place the area between quirk and intent are as vast because the viewer desires it to be.

Outright tales for and about theys and gays, although? Not their robust go well with. However in Drive-Away Dolls, Ethan Coen peels away from his sibling to make his first solo function a grand ol’ lesbian romp, attempting to cram a number of many years of misplaced time into one outrageous comedy. It doesn’t absolutely cohere, nevertheless it positive is a celebration.

Directed by Ethan Coen and co-written by Coen and his spouse, Tricia Cooke, Drive-Away Dolls is a long-gestating ardour undertaking of Cooke’s, a love letter to the (now dwindling) lesbian bar scene of her youth, set on the finish of the millennium. The movie follows two buddies, the unflappably relentless Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and the uptight Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), on a street journey from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, Florida, stopping at splendidly named queer haunts alongside the best way. (Suppose “She Shed” or “The Butter Churn.”) However Jamie and Marian don’t understand they rented a automotive meant for another person, carrying cargo that somebody crucial desires.

That final bit is the acquainted streak operating by means of Drive-Away Dolls, the crime caper these conversant in the Coen brothers’ work is likely to be anticipating. However on this case, the caper is ensconced in one thing Cooke describes as “trashier” than Ethan’s collaborations with Joel. One other great way of describing it might be “extra reckless.” There’s an exciting abandon to Drive-Away Dolls that runs counter to the attribute management the siblings are recognized for. The jokes are broad, the intercourse is lewd, the scene transitions are loony, and psychedelic interstitial footage drips out and in for nearly no motive in any respect, till the ultimate one reveals a punchline the viewers may do not know they’re being arrange for.

All this extra is great enjoyable, and watching beloved actors like Pedro Pascal, Invoice Camp, and Beanie Feldstein crash into Jamie and Marian’s roadtrip is endlessly pleasant. As an entire, nevertheless, Drive-Away Dolls feels a bit slight. The movie doesn’t make great use of its interval setting — largely, the yr (1999) is plot gas, with the dearth of smartphones serving as a persistent, believable motive for the misunderstandings and misdirections behind the movie’s caper antics.

Drive-Away Dolls might have simply made extra hay out of its interval setting, if solely to flesh out its two heroes. Qualley and Viswanathan are splendidly forged as Jamie and Marian, however their dynamic is overly acquainted: Free-spirited buddy desires to assist a prissy pal open up and possibly hook up with a woman for the primary time in three years. Additionally, possibly they’d be happier collectively? Simply kidding! (Until…)

Drive-Away Dolls’ well-worn beats are buttressed by great fashion, a deep care taken with the movie’s manufacturing and costume design. All that spotlight to the period that isn’t absolutely current within the script comes out within the visuals as an alternative. There isn’t a lot narrative texture to Marian and Jamie’s numerous stopovers — specifically, there isn’t a lot for Jamie or Marian to attach with. Whereas the pair have frequent and humorous interactions on their journey, the individuals they meet are kind of cartoon characters organising a gag.

Equally, it isn’t notably clear how Jamie even is aware of concerning the bars she desires to cease at. The alternatives for Jamie and Marian to type some type of reference to the individuals within the locations they go, to let the movie dwell within the actuality of how queer individuals discovered neighborhood within the pre-social-networking period, are scant. This lacking texture makes the film a sugary cocktail with Pop Rocks on the rim, overwhelming taste with arguably superfluous crackle that’s type of laborious to be mad at. Search for one thing deeper, and also you begin to really feel like Chief (Colman Domingo), the fixer for the movie’s sorta-villain (performed by somebody who’s extra enjoyable to find for your self), who’s chasing after the briefcase Jamie and Marian unwittingly wound up with.

But this lack of substance nags at Drive-Away Dolls, as a result of the movie does intersect with the political actuality of its period, rooting its antagonists in turn-of-the-century “household values” politics and the way queer existence is labeled vulgar. In repeat viewings, it’s doable that this nagging reveals itself to be a void, because the thinness of its characters is simply meant to facilitate gags, and the jokes don’t a lot construct out its characters or the world they inhabit.

Coen and Cooke don’t appear all that bothered by that, although, having crafted a movie the place being outrageous, homosexual, and outrageously homosexual is assertion sufficient. That is in all probability the filmmakers’ most cogent argument for Drive-Away Dolls, one made textual as the tip credit start to blow up onto the display preceded by the movie’s unique, much less well mannered title: Drive-Away Dykes.

Drive-Away Dolls is in theaters now.