Starring: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Pedro Pascal, Colman Domingo, Bill Camp, Matt Damon
OUR RATING: ★★☆☆☆
Story: Comedy caper directed and co-written by Ethan Coen. Drive-Away Dolls (2024) follows Jamie (Margaret Qualley), an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend, and her demure friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), who desperately needs to loosen up. In search of a fresh start, the two embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way.
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'People say things. It's not always what they feel.' - Marian (Drive-Away Dolls) Share on X
Carla: No.
Marian: “No” what, Carla?
Carla: You’re not wearing that.
Marian: I just came from work.
Carla: I came from Toledo. I don’t dress like it.
Carla: Okay. Look, keep the coat on. Take the shirt off underneath.
Marian: And flaunt my breasts? I’m not here to peddle my wares.
Carla: Why else would you be here?
Marian: To socialize.
Jamie: I’ve had it with love. I know bards and troubadours are high on it, but I don’t believe it’s relevant to the modern 20th soon-to-be 21st century lesbian.
Jamie: How can you have internal problems? You got your a** all bricked up. I’m not certain, honey darling, that you have ever reached deep inside any orifice to scoop out your soul, and fling it shamelessly at a fellow human being, and humiliate yourself, and grovel, and weep, and feel your ego completely disintegrate, otherwise known as the glory of love.
Jamie: Why would anybody go to Tallahassee, Florida?
Marian: My Aunt Ellis lives there.
Jamie: Can’t she move?
Jamie: That’s why we take this trip together, honey babe. We get our s**t together, together.
Marian: What’s a drive-away?
Jamie: Free one-way rental. You deliver the car to wherever some client of the drive-away company wants it, if they got one going near your destination.
Jamie: This is going to be F-U-N-N fun, girl.
Curlie: Don’t call me Curlie.
Jamie: Ain’t your name Curlie?
Curlie: My name is Curlie. We just met. It’s too familiar.
Marian: Have you ever been to Tallahassee?
Curlie: No. I got good sense. Your car is a Dodge Aries.
Marian: Oh. Okay. Is that a good car?
Curlie: Not really.
Marian: We don’t need to see the world’s largest Dixie cup.
Jamie: We don’t need to enjoy life, but as long as we’re here.
Curlie: We don’t have a discount for men of God, no. No, not for medical doctors either. Make up your mind which are you? It doesn’t matter. We have no discounts. Our everyday low prices are already rock bottom.
Curlie: They drive the car instead of you. Is that bad?
The Chief: Bad if they find the goods.
Jamie: You should remember this for future reference. When you’re in a social situation with a cop, there ain’t no social situation. There’s a “keep your f***ing mouth shut” situation. There’s a “yes, sir” situation is what there is.
Flint: It’s like talking to a bucket of wet cement.
Curlie: You wouldn’t know wet cement if it bit you in the a**.
Flint: And you would?
Jamie: Authenticity gets you somebody that works for Ralph Nader.
Jamie: You can be cheap. I promise, honey girl. Your best self.
Jamie: They are all repressed in New England. That is why we are going the other way.
Jamie: They had us read Portrait of a Lady in school. Boy, that was a great read. Like somebody dragging day-old spaghetti across my tits.
Marian: That’s a very apt simile.
Jamie: Henry James is, in fact, the reason that I don’t read. Except road signs.
Jamie: I’m from Texas. We don’t read minds. We operate on a handshake basis.
Jamie: S**t happens when you eat at Uncle Gino’s.
Sukie: Who the f*** are you?
Flint: Since when do women curse like that?
Arliss: We just want to locate your friends. They inadvertently took something that belongs to us. We don’t want to hurt them.
Sukie: They’re not my friends! Hurt them as much as you want.
Arliss: You cannot relate to the public, which in a service profession, is a big f***ing handicap.
Arliss: I take people in. I react. I read people to get what I want. You, though, you think life is this orderly series of people to beat the s**t out of. Well, real life is not like that. You only see it that way because you’re not nourished by human contact, the human give-and-take, so forth.
Arliss: You don’t engage the whole person.
Flint: Well, you did a great job helping me engage that very agile harpy.
Jamie: Marian, landing yourself in prison is a very hopeful sign for you.
Jamie: Marian, if I may, there are certain things in life which you got to sense and understand in order to live life. And one of the things that you got to understand is, well, all these funny little creatures that you probably noticed walking around on two legs, we call them human beings. Got to understand what makes them tick. And your whole social situation, you got to understand what that is.
Jamie: [after finding the case in the trunk] I saw this movie once where they come across this box, the people in the movie, and they opened the box, and it was like really, really bad.
Jamie: The police can protect us.
Marian: Protect us? They’re not the Secret Service, and we’re not Chelsea Clinton.
Arliss: How about next time, you let me do all the talking?
Flint: Sure, gassing is what you’re good at.
Arliss: Well it sure as hell ain’t what you’re good at.
Sukie: Did the two creeps find you?
Jamie: What?
Sukie: The two weirdos looking for you. I tried to be helpful.
Jamie: I’m going to help you break a big murder case.
Sukie: That is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’m a cop.
The Chief: Stop saying words.
Jamie: Marian, you have got to have a good, steamy f***.
Jamie: Got to keep that brain loose, let that mind fly.
Arliss: Yes, people might stroll by and see you looking foolish up there slapping ham on the veranda, but that is the price you pay for interaction.
Flint: Can’t wait to tell the chief.
Arliss: Yeah, and why don’t you also tell him that you’re a social f***ing imbecile that I’ve been carrying on my back all the way from Philadelphia!
The Chief: Ladies, you’re a day late and a d**k short.
Arliss: What are you talking about?
The Chief: The senator’s p**is is not in the case!
The Chief: He went to a party and met a hippie chick, Tiffany Plaster Caster. Housekeeping. She took a plaster cast of his excited thing. She made one model of each of her “old men”.
The Chief: His p**is passed from hand to hand. Finally ended up with an international collector named Alejandro Santos y Obrador.
The Chief: This p**is cannot become a piece of merchandise. Think of it, eBay, “Senator Gary Channel’s ding-dong, lightly used.” Comments, reviews.
Senator Gary Channel: Who are you?
Marian: Democrats.
Marian: Senator, save the sanctimony.
Jamie: And hand over the million smackers.
Sukie: What, are you an executive now? Did they make you the president of Little Miss Liar Pants, Inc.?
Jamie: We forgot to tell you about the suave guy’s head in the hatbox.
Marian: I am fully aware that the senator is a terrible person, but I have to admit, I’ll miss his…
Jamie: No worries, girl. I made a cast. And two copies.
Jamie: Right after birding, we’re off to Massachusetts. We just decided last night.
Aunt Ellis: Well, what do they have in Massachusetts that we don’t have right here in North Florida?
Jamie: Women can get married there.
Aunt Ellis: To each other? Well, that’s an innovation.