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Rob Grant and Doug Naylor were a good team. Back in the late 80s and early 90s they collaborated as the writers of the successful BBC space set sitcom Red Dwarf and under their joint stewardship it was a show that brought together sophisticated and imaginative stories with a great sense of humour. Then in 1995 Grant left the show and series seven went ahead without him. At this is point it became evident quite how the two men had complimented one another; Naylor was clearly the plot guy and Grant was the funny one. The smart sci-fi concepts were still there but not the laughs.

The reason I thought of this is because now brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have both made movies separate to one another and a similar situation might have arisen arisen. In 2021 Joel directed a searing black and white production of one of Shakespeare’s most hard hitting plays with The Tragedy of Macbeth and Ethan has given us Drive Away Dolls. One is a serious film with precise editing, meticulous shot composition and really sharp performances and the other is quite the opposite; a crime caper focused totally on quirky characterisations and loose gags. The prioritisation of the narrative has most certainly taken a back seat. It’s hard not to now think that Joel is the contemplative artist and Ethan the one who makes jokes about random violence and severed body parts.

Drive Away Dolls is definitely still a Coen movie though, albeit one with some key elements missing. Think of the silliest of their back catalogue and then think sillier. It certainly doesn’t compare with the best of their work, like Inside Llewyn Davis, Miller’s Crossing and Blood Simple, but it is quite a lot like Intolerable Cruelty and Burn After Reading. It’s hard not to think that this is suffering from the lack of Joel’s guidance as those elements that are missing are probably those of restraint. Apparently the script, written by Ethan Coen and his wife and longtime Coen editor Tricia Cooke, has been hanging around unmade for twenty years, and if you were uncharitable you might imagine it being constantly being brought to the table by one brother and pushed away by the other.

The film also has a typically rushed and under developed ending but I still blame them both for all those times that has been the case before.

Drive Away Dolls is still fun but it feels insubstantial, for any film maker let alone one with such a celebrated filmography.

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The Ripley Factor:

Whatever else it may be though, this is most certainly a female story and that’s the first time anyone has said that of a Coen film. The whole idea of two innocent players getting messed up in some crime caper when they inadvertently drive away with someone else’s case, and it’s nefarious contents, in the back of their car is not new but it’s rare that both characters are women. Margaret Qualley and Viswanathan both have huge charisma and their company is enjoyable as they are chased and threatened by men but still come out on top. Speaking of which, the lovers on the lam element gets a feminist twist in here as well as the couple are gay, and this heavily plays into the adventure. Unlike Pulp Fiction you get to see what is in the case too, and in fact I’m now imagining the same thing in the Pulp Fiction case which is amusing me.

Alongside Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein also features and has her own moments of empowerment and Miley Cyrus appears in a random flashback and turns out to have played quite a key role in shaping the driving elements of the plot.

There is some quite full on female nakedness in the film and actually the fact that the two leads clearly both have a no nudity clause only serves to highlight how unnecessary this element is. You lose nothing by not seeing them undressed when the story has need for them to be so (this is also all quite sex positive) and it is is clear you’d have lost nothing if all the woman had been shot just as discreetly.