Scott Forbes (21:53.869)
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Flickering Dreams podcast. I am Scott Forbes and I'm joined today by the Reverend Andy Godfrey and Emma Sewell. And today we are reviewing Drive Away Dolls. This is the newest film from one half of the Coen brothers, Ethan Coen, who has brought to us a comedy crime thriller about a couple of lesbians on a road trip as they are being chased by a couple
of Hitmen looking for a briefcase with some interesting objects within it. Here's a clip.
Scott Forbes (23:11.693)
So for this one, I feel like it's going to be quite controversial and divisive because of the subject matter and generally the tone of this film, which is very silly. Now, you guys, you've been doing this long enough with me. You know, I'm not really a big fan of silly and this gets extremely silly. However, I actually kind of like this one. We see our lead characters played by
Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan. And they are a couple of friends. One of them is more of an outgoing character, very confident, open with her sexuality. And the other one is a lot more sort of uptight, conservative, quiet character. And as they go on this road trip, they hire a car which was intended for somebody else.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (23:41.636)
Thanks for watching!
Scott Forbes (24:08.949)
intended for somebody else that had a briefcase left in the boot. And it... yeah, we won't get into that because that's third-act spoiler stuff, but we'll just say that there is lots of cameos in this film. One at the beginning from Pedro Pascal, who is in possession of this briefcase until he's not.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (24:17.081)
Thanks for watching!
Emma Sewell (24:19.054)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.
Scott Forbes (24:38.985)
Okay, so I like this because I thought the performances were pretty solid across the board. I liked both of her leads, particularly Margaret Qualley. I thought she was really impressive. Supporting cast, you've got the likes of Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Matt Damon, Bill Camp, Pedro Pascal, Miley Cyrus. This is fun, I would say, in some ways. Even if tonally it's a little bit all over the place.
There are some scenes of action which I thought were quite good in terms of the gory action point of view, especially some of the earlier stuff with the aforementioned Mr Pascal. I thought there was some interesting relationship development in terms of between our two leads, particularly with one trying to bring the other out of her shell. I liked the way they went with that.
Then towards the end was for me surprisingly fun goofiness. And then the only real thing that I was confused about and didn't think needed to be in there was these random psychedelic scenes that just popped up out of nowhere. And there was like three or four of them. And as they're going on, I'm like, am I, did I miss something or what is going on? What's this for? And it sort of goes into it at the end, but also not.
really, they could have explained that in a different way.
So for me, yeah, decent action, good fun, sometimes good comedy. Not everything works, obviously, in a comedy like this, but enough of it works to for me to enjoy it. I think Mr. Godfrey has an opposing view, however. Andy?
Emma Sewell (26:31.643)
Okay.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (26:34.301)
Absolutely. Listen, I'm going to go for this. The best film last year by a country mile was about two ladies in a car on a road trip. Okay. That was the best film last year by a mile. This is about two girls in a car on a road trip. They write on the bonnet, "Love is a Sleigh Ride to Hell". This movie is a sleigh ride into cinematic hell. Laugh, I didn't think I'd start and I didn't.
You could hear the clunk of the typewriters between the scenes as they adjusted the script to time think something that was funny. You could almost see the stagehand running on to give the actors their lines as they were making it up while they were filming. This film seemed to me to have very little thought put into it. It seemed to me it wanted to be a Coen Brothers film. It's literally one half of a Coen Brothers film. It wanted to be a Tarantino film to which my response was yeah right, dream on.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (27:27.992)
For me, I mean, I saw it with a relatively small audience, okay? Not one person laughed during the whole 84 minutes. The good Dr. Mark Kermode said, this film was 84 minutes long and I felt every one of those 84 minutes. So did I. I thought it was trash. I thought it was rubbish and I'm sorry, Scott. And I love you dearly, but this is just, this was, this was, this was.
so pathetic I couldn't believe that I was wasting my time. I've never walked out of a movie in my life. I've never been so tempted to walk out of a movie as I was with this one. It's just rubbish.
Scott Forbes (28:10.729)
Well, you can tell us how you really feel. Although good point about that time though. When did you see a blockbuster, a big cinematic film that's that short?
Rev. Andy Godfrey (28:12.148)
I have not said any more.
Emma Sewell (28:14.058)
I'm sorry.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (28:18.84)
Well, you see, I think that you mentioned the psychedelic scenes, right? The film is 84 minutes long. What's that? 5, 10 minutes is taken up with psychedelic scenes. To pad it out! Because they've got no story and they've got no script and they've got no acting. They need it. Oh, what should we do to pad this out to make it feature length? I know, we'll put in some psychedelic scenes. Let's go all Beatle-ly in 60s in the middle of a 90s film. No! Just no!
Scott Forbes (28:23.273)
Oh, you could have cut about 10 minutes. Yeah.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (28:47.832)
End of
Scott Forbes (28:47.897)
Okay... Um... So, Emma, where are you falling? In between somewhere maybe?
Emma Sewell (28:53.98)
Well.
definitely in between. All of the people in it, very good actors, actresses, particularly all the younger members of the cast, I really enjoy their performances and everything I've seen. It was nice to have them all together.
Emma Sewell (29:28.598)
it was just too scatty at times. I wouldn't have said it was too long. I'm happy to go with scatty, I won't go with long. I wasn't too bothered about it but I liked the idea of it and the execution of it really wasn't the one. And like you know I'm not going to
Rev. Andy Godfrey (29:32.065)
Long.
Emma Sewell (29:57.678)
rant about the psychedelic scenes and like you said Scott, it does, at the end of the film, it does tie it together but when you see the first one it doesn't really have any context to it and I just sat there, I was really confused, like have I missed something? I think there's a much better way to do that would have helped it make sense.
Beanie Feldstein, her character pops up again towards the end but that also felt a little out of kilter. I think again if there were a few tweaks it would have made sense. but that didn't really fit for me. I don't know if any of you had seen it, there's actually a television series called Teenage Bounty Hunters which came out a while back.
And that is two teenage girls and they're very much in that sort of, not situation, but it's like that friendship dynamic. And that, the way that was done really worked and it's kind of what I was expecting when I saw the trailer originally. And yeah, I just, All around I think they could have made better use of everything that was in it.
And I will say I found it gratuitous at points and just like it doesn't bother me with anything that they had in the film but I was just like you could have had some story instead of another one of these scenes. But yeah again that's spoilers so I'm definitely somewhere in the middle on this one.
Scott Forbes (31:56.217)
Okay, well let's go with some scores here. Andy?
Rev. Andy Godfrey (32:04.353)
There were some good songs in it. Two, sorry, just a two. Can't go any higher than that.
Scott Forbes (32:10.905)
Okay, and where are you gonna sit?
Emma Sewell (32:16.462)
I'm probably gonna go another four, you know?
Scott Forbes (32:19.929)
Okay, well I was going to go with 7 out of 10 on this one. So that gives us what 13 out of, so 13, what's that divided by three, it's a 4.33. So yeah, unfortunately on this occasion, Drive Away Dolls, it's another MISS.
Emma Sewell (32:21.07)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Emma Sewell (32:44.388)
I'm sorry.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (32:44.932)
Sorry Scott. It was a hit for you and that's what matters.