Flipping the Road Trip: Drive Away Dolls

By Anne Gregg

Spoilers for Drive Away Dolls

Over the past year we have been blessed with quite a few queer takes on classic comedy genres. Bottoms reinvented the raunchy teen comedy, Down Low tackles the “accidental dead person” trope, and Dicks: The Musical is an absurd parent trap parody with comical queer themes. Drive Away Dolls, the latest movies from Ethan Coen and his partner Tricia Cooke follows suit, flipping the road trip, Tarantino-esque pulp style on its head to be a wildlesbian ride.

Set in 1999, Drive Away Dolls follows newly single Jaime (Margaret Qualley) and her uptight best friend, Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), as they embark on a road trip to Marian’s aunt’s house in Tallahassee. Unbeknownst to them, the trunk of their rental car holds precious cargo and Pedro Pascal’s frozen head. On the order of a mysterious employer, The Chief (Colman Domingo) sends two incompetent hitmen Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C. J. Wilson) to recover the cargo and deal with the girls. Meanwhile, Jaime has a grand plan to get Marian laid and turn their trip into a wild adventure filled with good-old-fashioned lesbian fun.

Drive Away Dolls blends the stylized action of The Nice Guys and Baby Driver with the camp humor of a queer indie film. Drive Away Dolls’s action humor is not quippy one liners and pointing out the absurdity of the situation the two girls have gotten themselves into. Instead, Drive Away Dolls uses its borrowed B-movie aesthetic so it can be absurd and camp. Scenes cut between each other with tacky 70s star wipes. Miley Cyrus appears on screen in trippy drug sequences before her presence in the movie is ever explained. Sex scenes are so wildly overperformed that they are usually more comical than they are exploitative. It uses the nostalgic sexploitation action film style to enhance its humor.

Drive Away Dolls and its humor is not for everyone. It’s absurd, incredibly raunchy, and sometimes tacky. It is also filled with phallic humor and imagery that becomes a little excessive by the end of the film. The precious cargo Jaime and Marian accidentally harbor are replicas of important political figures’ penises. While this reveal is comical, it falls apart when you think about it a little too long. Marian is initially more disgusted by the replicas than the head, even though she later changes her tune.

The political comedy in the reveal also doesn’t add up to much. There are minor references here and there to homophobia and parts of the South not being a safe or accepting place for the queer community, but nothing too substantial, which is fair. Not every story needs to have a deep take on homophobia. But Drive Away Dolls wants to be political without being serious. While comedy can be a great genre for political commentary, Drive Away Dolls fails to say anything meaningful. The closest we get is politicians are hypocrites who preach certain christian values even though they fail to practice them themselves. Drive Away Dolls works much better as a fun lesbian romp. Marian is the highlight of the film. She’s socially awkward, funny, lonely, and sincere. Her journey to getting over her ex and becoming a little less uptight is funny, heartfelt and really the only substantial part of this fever dream of a film. Her relationship with Jaime is delightful. I love seeing a buddy comedy turn into a love story. Here again, the storyline is weak. While it’s entertaining to watch Jaime flirt with Marian in her exaggerated country accent, there is no deep reflection that compels Jamie to realize that settling down with Marian is her destiny.

Despite its Pulp Fiction references and nostalgic set dressing, Drive Away Dolls is not a deep film. The character arcs aren’t as satisfying as they could be and the script is filled with plot holes. Drive Away Dolls is a film where you just have to turn off your brain and let its absurdity wash over you as you embrace the wild ride.

About the Author

Anne Gregg is a poet and writer from Northwest Indiana. She is an English Writing major at DePauw University and is the editor-in-chief of her campus’s literary magazine, A Midwestern Review. She is a Media Fellow at her university and loves dissecting how LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in film and tv.