Drive-Away Dolls

Directed by Ethan Coen, Drive-Away Dolls follows Margaret Qualley’s Jamie and Geraldine Viswanathan’s Marian as they’re confronted by a whole mess of oddball characters after agreeing to transport a vehicle to Florida. Filmmaker Coen, armed with his and Tricia Cooke’s screenplay, delivers a perpetually irreverent endeavor that remains unable, for the most part, to capture the viewer’s interest and attention, as the movie, which runs a short-yet-not-short-enough 84 minutes, has been saddled with a pervasively (and aggressively) off-kilter feel that’s been hard-wired into its myriad of uninvolving attributes – with, especially, the predominantly grating lead performances only compounding the picture’s arms-length atmosphere. (Qualley, in particular, offers up a nails-on-a-chalkboard turn that remains a distraction from start to finish.) And while Coen has admittedly peppered the proceedings with a few agreeable elements, including (and especially) a terrific supporting appearance by Joey Slotnick as a verbose thug, Drive-Away Dolls builds towards a fairly endless third act that ensures it concludes on just about as underwhelming and anticlimactic note as one could envision – which does, in the final analysis, cement the movie’s place as a misfire that seems unlikely to have worked as a short film.

** out of ****