Ethan Coen's "Drive-Away Dolls", Reviewed by Joel Coen
Drive away from this dud!
Is driving away from something the same as driving towards something? That’s the question that “filmmaker” Ethan Coen asks with his new project, Drive-Away Dolls. But the only place that movie-goers will want to drive after kicking the wheels on this tired turd is straight off a fucking cliff.
In the interest of full disclosure, my editor has requested that I mention that I am Mr. Coen’s brother, and that he negatively reviewed my film The Tragedy of MacBeth on this site two years ago. I have also occasionally collaborated with Mr. Coen in the past. Nonetheless, I feel that I am fully capable of objectively reviewing Mr. Coen’s work, and in fact, I have gone so far as to obtain this notarized Certificate Of Objectivity from the state of California.
Ethan Coen’s Drive Away Dolls is the greatest crime against humanity since The Holocaust. If Stephen King spent a thousand years trying to imagine the most horrible torment a human could endure, he would not come up with anything half as awful as the experience of watching this film. If aliens ever threaten Earth, we should project Drive Away Dolls onto the moon, because the aliens would surely flee the galaxy in much the same way that audiences have fled theatres trying to escape this singularity of shit.
Mr. Coen’s apparent goal — aside from making Tommy Wiseau look like Ingmar Bergman — was to replicate a ‘90s B-comedy. That he failed to clear even that subterranean bar is the only interesting thing about the film. It is truly stunning to watch a man set out to make the spiritual descendant of Mannequin 2 and then fail; it’s like watching someone set out for Burger King but ending up eating mustard packets in a janitor’s closet. It would be one thing to fall short of genre classics like The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona, which happen to be movies that Mr. Coen helped type. But the fact that Mr. Coen set his sights astoundingly low suggests that, on some level, he knows that he lacks the talent God gave a condom full of lard.
Speaking of condoms full of lard: Mr. Coen’s wife, Tricia Cooke, co-wrote the film. I suppose it’s not surprising that Ms. Cooke failed to deliver a movie that people will enjoy, since she notoriously fails to deliver enjoyment around the holidays, when she buys gifts that her family finds pointless and lame. I mean, really: Wouldn’t a gift recipient need to be a golfer to enjoy a golf-themed thermos that says “The older I get, the harder it is to find my balls”? And who gets four-time Academy Award winner Frances McDormand a Denver Broncos sweatshirt? Regift much? Ms. Cooke’s astoundingly shitty taste has been conclusively proven by her gift-buying, screenwriting choices, and selection of a husband.
Of course, Mr. Coen had to collaborate with someone, because he’s a talentless hack who needs someone else to do the actual work. Mr. Coen’s penchant for credit-stealing probably started in early childhood, specifically the time that Jimmy Heurlin and I made a really cool obstacle course for our Tonka trucks and Ethan tried to say that he helped. Jimmy and I spent the whole morning making a course that went the entire length of the backyard; it had big jumps and a lake you had to drive through and a thing where you had to blast through a wall made of Lincoln Logs. But right as we were finishing, Ethan came back from karate class and without even asking put some creepy crawlers under the rope bridge. And then he was like “Mom, Dad, look what we made!” And they were all “Great job, you three!” And that’s basically exactly what making Fargo was like.
Mr. Coen’s chronic deceitfulness likely hurt his lead actresses’ performances. Co-leads Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan seemed distracted and confused — what faulty direction did Mr. Coen give them? Did he tell them something perplexing? Did he give them information that didn’t quite compute? More to the point: Did he tell them that I got diarrhea on the monkey bars in fifth grade? He tells everyone that even though it’s not true! I was on the monkey bars and then got off and ran inside to use the bathroom! That is not getting diarrhea “on” the monkey bars! And I was only sick in the first place because I got the flu that Ethan brought home from Mike Fegel’s birthday party! DID ETHAN TELL MARGARET QUALLEY THAT I GOT DIARRHEA ON THE MONKEY BARS?!?!?! I AM GOING TO ABSOLUTELY DIE IF HE DID THAT!!! HE IS SUCH A MEAN JERK!!!
In conclusion: Should any reader be in possession of a time machine, I implore them to use it to short-circuit Mr. Coen’s film career by any means necessary. If you worry that altering history might deprive the world of classics like Inside Llewyn Davis and No Country for Old Men, fear not: Those films would exist without Ethan Coen. In fact, they likely would have benefitted from not having Mr. Coen wandering around being a big stupid tag-along like he has been his whole life. In Drive Away Dolls, Mr. Coen drives away from what worked and ends up bleeding out in a ditch with his entrails spread over 50 feet of highway. But it was inevitable that at some point, the No Talent Police would end up scraping his carcass off the road.
And P.S.: I did break your Lite Brite, Ethan. Put my foot right through it, 100% on purpose. Suck my nuts, twerp.
RATING: 1/2 Tonka Trucks out of five
For the lawyers: This is a bit. Joel Coen had nothing to do with it.
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On the plus side, it’s only 84 minutes long.
Frances McDormand won THREE best actress in leading role oscars--Fargo, the Billboard one, and the one about traveling across the country in a refurbished van.