For a lot of their decadeslong profession, filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen specialised in what could be referred to as cartoon noir: Footage like Blood Easy, Elevating Arizona, Fargo, and Burn After Studying combined painterly riffs on shopworn Hollywood thriller tropes with a flat-out foolish Merrie Melodies sensibility. These films had been murderous—and hilarious.
The duo additionally took regional specificity critically, or at the very least with sharply noticed comedian depth: Their films had been set in extremely exaggerated variations of particular locations at particular occasions, with particular consideration paid to native customs and folkways, and the odd characters who bummed round America’s amusing native scenes.
This form of existential, hyperviolent-yet-comic film was all the trend on the planet of Nineties indie filmmaking—see 2 Days in the Valley—and many of the entrées within the style supplied weak imitations of the Coen brothers’ type. The magic of the Coen brothers was the power to elegantly steadiness these disparate parts. One way or the other all of them cohered into one thing approaching a worldview, or at the very least some excellent films.
Drive-Away Dolls, director and co-writer Ethan Coen’s first narrative characteristic with out his brother, goals for the same mix of tone and components: It is a noir-ish lesbian street film set on the American East Coast within the late Nineties. There is a quirky comedian vibe, a tour of a selected slice of America, and, sure, a homicide or three. It is all very acquainted, and in moments it nearly comes collectively. However regardless of these moments, there is a flatness and even a tiredness to the proceedings, because the movie circles gags and situations the Coens have finished higher when working collectively.
The film begins in Philadelphia on the tail finish of 1999, when an anxious man in a bar (Pedro Pascal) carrying a distinctive-looking briefcase is murdered in an alley outdoors a bar. The scene, in all probability the perfect within the film, is a basic Coen brothers–type setpiece. It is shot like an particularly goofy homage to black-and-white noir, with heavy shadows and exaggerated facial expressions that virtually pause to wink on the viewers. It is so elaborate, so cartoonish, Tex Avery and Friz Freleng could be jealous.
The film is much less profitable, nevertheless, when it jumps throughout town to a pair of 20-something mates, Jamie and Marian (Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan), who, after some introductory hijinks, find yourself on a street journey in a beat-up automobile headed down the East Coast. They’ve acquired the automobile by way of a “driveaway” service, during which their job is to ship the automobile to Tallahassee, Florida. However it seems the automobile has an uncommon bundle within the again—the case from the opening scene—and there are highly effective actors out to get it again.
Largely that is an excuse for Jamie and Marian to take a shaggy, ironic tour of America’s I-95 hall in the course of the tail finish of the Clinton period, considered via the lens of the period’s unsettled homosexual tradition: Jamie has simply damaged up along with her girlfriend, and the 2 cease at lesbian bars alongside the way in which whereas heading for an inevitable romantic entanglement. But there’s bigotry within the air, within the type of ubiquitous freeway billboards for a household values senator performed by Matt Damon. In the meantime, the pair are chased by a few shady, intermittently violent characters, Arliss and Flint (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson), overseen by their slick boss, Chief (Colman Domingo).
If this appears like precisely the form of crazy, scattered premise that the Coen brothers specialised in bringing collectively—effectively, sure, it does. However the lone Coen brother, who co-wrote the script with Tricia Cooke, struggles to place the items collectively: The discursive comedian dialogue comes out flat and psuedo-quirky; the mix of comedy and violence looks like a tic; the consistently arguing dangerous guys play like second-rate ripoffs of the Steve Buscemi/Peter Stormare hitman duo from Fargo. There is a should-be-interesting try to view the homosexual tradition of the late ’90s East Coast as one other distinctive American scene, a unusual little subculture to be explored and gently caricatured whereas acknowledging the right-wing, socially conservative politics of the period. However the film’s reflexively snarky posturing and penchant for ha-ha randomness means it struggles to land some extent.
All too usually, Drive-Away Dolls performs like a parody of a Coen brothers film, an outdated homage by an particularly proficient copycat. It is a ’90s throwback alright—to not the Coen brothers’ finest work, however to the procession of imitators who took their cues from the brothers. Drive away, drive away.
