Review: Drive-Away Dolls

I dunno, y'all, I think you might just hate dykes.

Drive-Away Dolls is Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, the lesbian to whom he's polyamorously married, writing a turn-of-the-Millennium road movie about two lesbians who get inadvertently caught up in a scheme involved Pedro Pascal's severed head and a cast of Matt Damon's penis. If that doesn't appeal to you, you probably don't enjoy movies.

A gonzo premise is going to come with flaws. The third act is a contrived left turn, though in fairness it's also too funny for that to be a problem. The pacing is off, and the psychedelic cut-aways with Miley Cyrus don't gel with anything else that's happening. If you come to this movie wanting narrative discipline, you're going to be disappointed.

But if you want gonzo comedy about two lesbians in deep denial about their mutual attraction, and how to express queerness in a death trap of a country, you're going to appreciate Drive-Away Dolls. The two leads are perfect, the lesbian sex is the best I've seen in a movie since Bound, Colman Domingo steals every shot he's in, and like, they cloned Matt Damon's penis, man.

There's also real tenderness in this: the conversations that a sapphic couple has driving into the rural South are the ones this movie depicts with total accuracy. Janet and I have had to look both ways before entering some cities. There's something real at the heart of this goofy mess that keeps it from being just another screwball comedy channeling Thelma & Louise, Run Lola Run, Some Like It Hot, and Reservoir Dogs. If messy pacing ruined this for you, I don't really get why you watch movies.