Drive-Away Dolls 2024 is Ethan Coen's attempt as a Grindhouse picture

  Blender Dumbass
October 11, 2025

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#driveawaydolls #ethancoen #MargaretQualley #film #review #comedy #movies #cinemastodon

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Ethan Coen is a brother of Joel Coen with whom they made a lot of cool black-comedies and other cinema throughout the years. From starting a mock-religion with The Big Lebowski in 1998, to winning a best picture Oscar in 2007 with No Country for Old Men and doing other great cinema before, after and in between, those motherfuckers know how to make movies. So then comes a movie just from Ethan ( and his wife Tricia Cooke ) about lesbians, that is intentionally trying to be a bad film ( like the bullshit Robert Rodriguez is doing with Mechete )? Interesting...

The movie immediately establishes itself as fucking silly as fuck. We start with a Pedro Pascal character with a briefcase running away for his life from somebody that is apparently trying to get the case from him. He runs into a dark alley with a dead end and then... oh shit! he realizes it is a dark alley with a dead end. And the bad guys get into a stupid fight with him, until they eventually kill him in the most absurd ( yet bloody ) way possible. Getting the case from him.

That is when we are introduced to our main characters. We have Jamie ( Margaret Qualley ) a lesbian. She is introduced in the middle of licking Sukie's pussy. Sukie is played by Beanie Feldstein. Then we get a stiff kind of anti-social lesbian Marian ( Geraldine Viswanathan ). She isn't socially-awkward per se, but she is more like anti-social. She doesn't want people to talk to her. Or to ask her out. She is a friend with Jamie, but that's about it. She is a lesbian, but she didn't have any sex for over 3 years. Because she just doesn't feel like letting people in.

The film begs a slight psycho-sexual analysis, because it constantly reminds us that Marian, as a child, used to be a peeping tom. We see multiple flash-back sequences of her as like a 11-12 year old girl, using various ways, to spy on a neighbor lady, who liked sun-bathing naked in her back yard. If you remember the Coen brother's 2009 movie A Serious Man, about a Jewish college professor struggling to remain kosher enough to keep his job. Even the poster of the film is depicting the main character standing on the roof of his house looking over to the side. In the film itself it is revealed that he was looking at a naked lady sunbathing in her back-yard. This one thing has a sort of thematic connection between the two films.

This B-movie series of films by Ethan Coen doesn't end with Drive-Away Dolls. Literally a year later ( and I will review that film ASAP ) Coen made a second film in the series called Honey Don't!. In that film, there is a little boy obsessed with Margaret Qualley's character. He is trying to use logic on her, to make her conciser being with him ( sexually ) while he is like 8 or something.

I'm starting to believe that this peeping tom / sexual little boys theme comes directly from Ethan Coen. It seems like a theory could be made that little Ethan was a peeping tom himself. Or he was frustrated with how limiting the reality of the child is ( when it comes to sex ). Just a few days ago I was visiting my brothers, one of whom had his 10th birthday. When the parents went to sleep and he could talk to me a bit more frankly, he expressed a dislike towards various rules regarding relationships. He said something along the lines of "I want to be married now! I don't want to wait.". Again, he is just 10 years old.

Growing up as a Jewish boy myself I really get his feeling. Other ( non religious ) boys are allowed to at least play with girls. They get to at least touch them, hug them, talk to them. As a religious boy all this restriction builds up inside into a very strong sexual tension. There was a story in one ultra-orthodox Jewish boarding school, that two boys couldn't handle the sexual tension, but because they didn't have lube, they got stuck inside of one another, which prompted a need to call an ambulance. Those were two little kids not allowed to even talk to girls. A lot of the more religious people are utterly perverted on the inside, because they suppress their sexuality.

If Ethan Coen ( who is Jewish ) experienced even a little bit of this orthodox upbringing, it is absolutely understandable why little kids ( and grown men ) in his films are slightly perverted. They are not your typical rapists. They are peeping toms, or kids who want to bang their aunt.

Speaking of the movie itself, the directing of the film is rather strange. Like you feel that you are in good hands with Ethan Coen. He knows how to tell a story using a camera. Yet some of the choices are rather bazaar. For example, the film has stupid fucking cross-fade effects. Like the kind of bullshit you may find in Windows Video Editor from the Windows XP times. Then the movie ( multiple times ) out of nowhere has a hallucination sequence. But nobody in the film took any drugs. It is literally out of nowhere. And it is so motherfucking strange.

The dialogue in the film is snappy. It is not Tarantino, but it is Ethan Coen. And Ethan Coen knows how to write good shit. Even if with this movie he specifically tried to make dumb-fuckery he still wrote some rather hilarious dialogue.

On a whole the film is very fucking silly. I'm not gonna spoil what's inside the briefcase. But damn that was fucking stupid. In a good way of course.

Happy Hacking!!!

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  Troler c:0



That reminds me of Jonukas from I am. Since he was asked by a 9 year old girl if he would marry her.

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