Drive Away Dolls Review

So it's been a shit month for movies, hasn't it been. Not a rhetorical question, it has. The only good thing I've seen this month that wasn't a rerelease was Lisa Frankenstein, and no one else saw it. I was holding out hope for Drive-Away Dolls, since not only is the director and the writer the producers, but the director is one of the Coen Brothers. Yeah, I guess they split up? I didn't know that. But please, please be good. Especially since I just saw Land of Bad.

Side note, I choose the poster for the front of the review based on the poster I see when we do our marketing at work, which is why I'm using the one above. But occasionally we use a different one for the marquees, and I sort of love this one more.

I dunno. Looks cool.

What's The Movie About?

Two lesbians are travelling to Florida and accidently pick up a brief case some gangsters want, so the gangsters chase them down. 

What I Like. 

I really liked the gangster characters. The two who were chasing the girls had a really good chemistry, and I especially liked their dynamic. There was a lot of talk about enjoying life and social dynamic that I thought was really interesting, and also creates a great parallel between the leads and the gangsters following them. The ending is also spectacularly hilarious. Matt Damon isn't in much of the movie, but holy hell is his part goddamn funny.

What I Didn't Like.

The first three-fourths of the movie is, well, a little hard to watch. There's a lot of non-sequiturs that eventually get explained, but I honestly felt like they didn't really need to be in the movie at all. The transitions between scenes were jarring even if they weren't random psychedelia. I'm getting really suspicious of the prevalence of lesbians in movies now a days. It feels real exploitative sitting through the front half of this movie, although by the end I realized the sleezy nature of all the sex in the first half was intentional so I guess this movie gets a pass. I feel bad complaining about it since this is basically what I and other queer people seeking representation want, a lot of stories about us. But it is making me question why the only gay man I've seen in a movie recently was from that fuckin' Mean Girls reboot. Speaking of using in' instead of ing, clearly neither the writer nor the actress playing the white lead is from Texas, because that character's mannerisms are so chicken-fried it was honestly distracting. And I don't know whether Pedro Pascal's part in the movie was a brilliant joke or just a waste. 

Final Summation.

Alright, I need to word this carefully. Sitting through Drive Away Dolls is like listening to someone tell a long joke. The beginning is some what difficult to sit through and has some stuff that doesn't make sense, but once the punchline hits everything comes together. The real question I had to ask myself after watching this movie was, "Is the joke funny?". Yeah, I'd say so. I would recommend going out and seeing this movie.