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Drive-Away Dolls (alternately titled onscreen as Henry James' Drive-Away Dykes) is a 2024 crime comedy road film directed by Ethan Coen from a screenplay he co-wrote with his wife Tricia Cooke, who was also the film's editor and uncredited co-director. The two produced the film with Robert Graf and Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner.
Set in 1999, the film stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as two lesbian best friends on a road trip through on the United States' East Coast who become involved in a criminal scheme. It is Coen's first narrative film without his brother Coen brothers, and his second sole directorial work after the documentary (2022). The film co-stars Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp and Matt Damon. Drive-Away Dolls was released in Australia on February 22, 2024, and in the United States by Focus Features the following day. It received mixed reviews from critics. The film is followed by Honey Don't! (2025), as part of Coen's and Cooke's planned "lesbian B-movie trilogy."
Elsewhere in Philadelphia, Jamie and Sukie are lovers whose relationship unravels over Jamie's infidelity. After Sukie kicks her out of their apartment, Jamie learns that her friend Marian is planning a trip to Tallahassee, Florida and decides to tag along. They head into a drive-away car service where someone can transport a car one-way for another client. Due to a misunderstanding, they are given a car that someone else has already booked for a trip to Tallahassee.
Moments later, a trio of criminals consisting of Arliss, Flint, and Chief comes to the shop to pick up the car headed to Tallahassee. They find that Jamie and Marian have taken it by accident, along with unspecified cargo tied to their illegal dealings.
While Marian wants to go straight to Tallahassee, Jamie constantly tries to convince Marian to loosen up by taking detours and trying to have casual sex at along the way. Marian prefers to read Henry James' The Europeans but slowly comes out of her shell due to Jamie's prodding.
When the pair finally enters Florida, their car gets a flat tire. They open the trunk and find the briefcase Santos was holding and a basket containing Santos' preserved head.
Jamie and Marian are followed by Arliss and Flint, who are led on a by a soccer team who had invited Jamie and Marian to a party. When Jamie and Marian check into a hotel using Jamie's credit card, the mob is tipped off to their location. Jamie convinces Marian that she needs to have a positive sexual experience to enjoy life more, and they have sex where Marian Orgasm. Arliss, Flint, and Chief arrive in Tallahassee. Jamie decides to use the contents of Santos' briefcase: a collection of that were created from plaster casts of men's erect penises, including one of Senator Gary Channel. Marian is shocked upon finding her with Channel's dildo, but Jamie insists that she wants the sexual release that Marian had the night before.
Arliss and Flint burst into their room, retrieve Santos' head and the briefcase, and abduct the women at gunpoint. The women are tied to chairs and gagged in the backroom at a Dog racing. Chief arrives to meet them all and explains that the sex toys are created from plaster moulds from the genitals of influential public figures by Tiffany Plastercaster.
Channel is fearful that his reputation will be ruined if anyone learns of the dildo, which Jamie had used and left behind in the hotel room. After the gangsters have an argument that leads to Flint shooting the other two dead and running away, Jamie and Marian escape. They briefly make an escape plan to retrieve the last dildo and regroup at a new hotel. Once they regroup, Jamie and Marian shower together, where Marian states that she wants to make love with Senator Channel's dildo, which they do. Then, they decide to blackmail Channel.
Sukie has also been en route to Tallahassee in her capacity as a police officer after Jamie tipped her off. Jamie and Marian meet Channel at a lesbian bar and give him the dildo in exchange for one million dollars. Sukie intercepts them as they exit, and Channel, misinterpreting the interaction, turns back around to try to kill the women. Sukie shoots him. Channel survives, but his reputation is ruined when newspapers begin publishing articles about his criminal connections and the dildo collection.
The next day, Jamie and Marian meet with Marian's aunt at their hotel. Jamie casually mentions that she and Marian plan to go to Massachusetts as same-sex marriage is legal there. As the trio drives away, a bellhop races to give them a bag that they have left behind, which contains two plaster casts Jamie had made of the dildo modeled after Channel's penis.
Drive-Away Dolls is the debut of Coen as a solo director (excluding the 2022 documentary ), without the collaboration of his brother, Coen brothers. It is also his first narrative film since The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). Coen took a break from film-making in 2018 because he had grown bored with the process of creating a film. He explained this decision to the Associated Press by saying:
Coen and Cooke decided to make Drive-Away Dolls because the COVID-19 pandemic gave them the time to work on it. Coen has described Cooke as "in every way except name the co-director of the movie". He has stated that the only reason why Cooke is not credited as a co-director is because she is not a member of the Directors Guild of America.
Since the project's initial announcement, Coen has described the tone of Drive-Away Dolls as being similar to the early 1970s exploitation romance films he saw as a teenager. Cooke has cited Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bad Girls Go to Hell, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Go Fish, But I'm a Cheerleader, and the works of John Waters as reference points for the film.
Tiffany Plastercaster, Miley Cyrus's character, was based on the real-life artist Cynthia Plaster Caster.
The film was released in Australia on February 22, 2024, followed by a release in the United States by Focus Features the next day. It was released in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2024.
Audiences surveyed by [[CinemaScore]] gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by [[PostTrak]] gave it a 66% overall positive score.
In a negative review, Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail wrote, "There is a fine line between endearing, breezy silliness and second-hand embarrassment, a border that the undercooked film crosses back and forth over and over again until there's no space left for your eyes to roll."
Tomris Laffly of RogerEbert.com gave the film three and a half out of four stars and wrote, "Sometimes, there is the slightest air of obviousness in Drive-Away Dolls, which can't avoid inevitable comparisons to older (and better) idiosyncratic crime capers, many of them by the Coens themselves. But that doesn't lessen the nostalgic bliss the film stirs in one with all its foul-mouthed, naughty glory; not when the fun had by everyone involved in the project is so palpable on the screen. In that, there is a disarming what the hell, why not quality to Cooke and Coen's writing, with the carefree words and actions of Jamie and Marian jovially bouncing off the page and landing on the viewers' eyes and ears with the same jubilant vigor."
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