“Drive-Away Dolls” Review – The Worst Movie of the Year?

“Drive-Away Dolls” was co-written and directed by Ethan Coen, and it is his first feature made without his longtime filmmaking partner and brother Joel Coen. After having suffered through this absolute abomination against all things good in this world, it could not be clearer that Joel was carrying Ethan’s weight all those years.

And yes, the film was worse than “Madam Web.” This review’s title is accurate. “Madam Web” is hilariously terrible and actually a fun time. “Drive-Away Dolls” is just miserable.

The film follows two lesbian friends, the sex-obsessed Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and the timid Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), on a road trip, where they stumble across a briefcase linked to a larger conspiracy. Along their travels they’re pursued by a pair of mobsters hired by a corrupt politician to retrieve the briefcase, as it contains a devastating personal artifact that could destroy his reputation. What’s that secret artifact? A dildo constructed from a mold of his genitalia. Does that sound funny to you? If so, you’ll be one of the two people in the world who could ever possibly enjoy this boring, disastrous slog.

There is plenty of discussion around the concept of formulaic, factory filmmaking in Hollywood right now, namely with the Marvel films. While I strongly believe such criticisms toward the MCU are warranted, I find them even more warranted toward “Drive-Away Dolls,” which should be taught in film schools as a textbook case of uninspired and generic storytelling. We’ve seen the exact same story with the exact same beats, plot points, “twists,” and jokes from the Coens before. This film is essentially just an 84-minute reel of their previous filmography, except what Ethan Coen has created is far more grotesque and soulless than anything they made in the past.

This film has nothing to latch onto and feels entirely hollow. It is so damn boring and repetitive and uninspired and spirit-draining. I would say that there wasn’t a single engaging frame of this film if it weren’t for the hallucinatory transition scenes that awoke me from my open-eyed slumber only because of their what-the-hell-was-that?!-ness. For no apparent reason, scenes will be interrupted by acid trip visuals with a cameo from Miley Cyrus of all people. They serve absolutely no point in the film, as they are unrelated to the narrative, characters, themes, or setting. It is some of the most attention deprived, unwieldy directing and editing I have ever seen.

Coen’s woeful screenplay is an absolute dumpster fire full of plot holes. For instance, Bill Camp plays a character named Curlie, who gets clubbed in the head and is left lying on the floor of his office for literal days on end. He has no food, water, assistance… anything. Yet somehow he’s perfectly fine, except for some minor wooziness. How? Then there’s the plot hole in which Pedro Pascal plays a man who gets his eyes pushed into the back of his skull before getting decapitated at the beginning of the film, and later when we see his decapitated head his eyes are perfectly intact. Worst of all, there’s a trope moment where our heroes are captured and tied up rather than just killed by the villains, for no reason other than plot convenience.

Then we have the magisterial talent of Beanie Feldstein, whose irritating and deafening loudness ruins every scene she’s in. Feldstein was funny in “Lady Bird,” but ever since then I’ve only found her to be utterly annoying in subsequent performances. In this film she plays a cop and Jamie’s hate-filled ex-girlfriend, and the script is engineered in a way to provoke that boisterous, screeching performance fron Feldstein. It is a truly, deeply, unbearably painful piece of acting that derailed this already derailed car crash of a film.

So, is there anything good about the movie? Viswanathan was decent, simply because she was the only actor who didn’t annoy me. There was also a joke involving a political ad on a billboard that got a laugh out of me. That’s all.

“Drive-Away Dolls” is joyless and lifeless vermin. It is grueling to watch this motion picture version of crawling in mud beneath barbed wire for 27 hours. There is not a unique bone in this beast’s body. It is excruciatingly dull for 95% of its runtime, the other 5% being moments of repugnant insanity. How this has a positive Rotten Tomatoes score is beyond me. I loathed every millisecond of it, and it is easily the worst film I’ve seen since last year’s “Expend4bles.” At least that movie was so bad it was entertaining. Ethan Coen’s trash is far more bland.

D-