Drive Away Dolls, released in Philadelphia in 1999, features a sexually voracious man who is the toast (and butter and jam) of all his gay friends except his girlfriend Sookie (Beanie Feldstein). Margaret Qualley plays free spirit Jamie. She regularly engages in petty flirtations like biting her pillow. Jamie is finally unceremoniously dumped (except when removing a sex toy from the wall is considered a ritual) and she ends up living with Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan). Marian is a straight-laced cubicle man with a penchant for Henry James, with his sensible suits and humorless gaze. Jamie insists on traveling to Tallahassee to see Marian’s aunt to cheer her up. What they don’t know is that the drive-away service they signed up for (including a free rental car to Florida) has given them a Dodge Alley loaded with mysterious and valuable contraband.
The chaos puts Jamie and Marian in the crosshairs of a local crime syndicate led by a soft-spoken bastard known as the Chief (Coleman Domingo). The police chief enlists the help of two thugs to retrieve the suitcase. What follows is, on paper at least, a bizarre tour of the South’s best lesbian bars and “basement parties,” with Jamie and Marian successfully thwarting or outwitting their pursuers at every turn. . But the plot of Drive Away Dolls isn’t as important as giving Cohen and his co-writer wife Tricia Cooke the opportunity to throw in every naughty joke and pulpy-era reference they can. No: “The Big Lebowski” A sequence of ’70s-style wipes, psychedelics, and trippy animation that may make sense when the MacGuffin’s identity is finally revealed, but that doesn’t stop the rest of the movie It just feels unnecessary and forced.
The lead actresses are fully committed to their roles, which require Qualley to have a surprisingly candid conversation with a molasses-sweet Texas man. Viswanathan’s incredible comic talent is wasted on the reactions and tweets of straight women. The passers-by, played by Joey Slotnick and CJ Wilson, do their best with a soaring patter from outtakes from Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare’s Fargo. In that darkly funny masterpiece, stupidity was elevated to operatic heights, but here there’s just stupidity. There are some bright spots. Bill Camp introduces a welcome dose of crass realism even at the film’s most ill-mannered heights of insanity, and a third-act cameo barely saves the day.
largely. Drive Away Dolls is one of his movies that is extremely hilarious, full of hilarious villains and villains, and seems to have been reverse engineered to ignore serious criticism. Taking issue with the cartoonish violence, vulgar sexual jokes, and retro aesthetic feels like one of Marian’s buzz-killing insults.
It would be easy if Cohen could just keep the balloon afloat instead of making it feel like an exercise in unenjoyable overcompensation. “Drive Away Dolls” may not be aiming for greatness, but that doesn’t mean it needed to execute with such fierce self-congratulation. What begins as an amorous lark turns into a frenetic, over-the-top job, a punchline that itself has been searching for a setting all along. (Aficionados of the legendary groupies of the 1970s will get the joke.) Drive Away Dolls may be a success as a kitschy movie curio, but it falls by the wayside. It’s as empty and disposable as a Dixie cup.
R. at area theaters. Contains crude sexual content, full nudity, profanity, and some violence. 84 minutes.