Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
Directed by Ethan Coen
Jamie, an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend, and her demure friend Marian desperately needs to loosen up. In search of a fresh start, the two embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way.
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What critics compared Drive-Away Dolls to
And you could call Qualley’s Jamie a Coen archetype who goes all the way back to the Holly Hunter character in “Raising Arizona” — the Southern chatterbox, spewing her ironically literate folk wisdom. (“Raising Arizona” was the first of many movies in which the Coens built characters around the joke “Look! This drawling hick is actually smart!”)
While the film has echoes of past Coen Brothers films, especially Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Burn After Reading, it also feels fresh.
Qualley’s performance — the syrup-thick hillbilly accent wrapped around Byzantine dialogue — can’t help but recall “Raising Arizona,” the Coen brothers’ brilliant 1987 film. This, as Jamie might say, ain’t that (though she would use a lot more words to say it).
Stitch the pair together, and you’d probably end up with the kind of farcical melancholy that’s become the Coen trademark, delivered in various doses across the likes of Raising Arizona, A Serious Man, and Burn After Reading.
…it works hard to serve up lashings of black humor, in the tradition of older Coen Brothers movies like Raising Arizona, but you can hear the wheels whirring behind every joke.
In 2021, Joel Coen made the serious, black-and-white Shakespearean adaptation The Tragedy Of Macbeth, echoing the dramatic tones and themes of No Country For Old Men, Miller’s Crossing, and Blood Simple.
On the surface, the Coen Brothers’ output is easily divided between the comedic entries in the fraternal filmography (Raising Arizona; The Big Lebowski; Hail, Caesar; etc.) and their dramas (Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Inside Llewyn Davis, etc.).