Drive-Away Dolls
Focus Features | Release Date: February 23, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 50 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
24
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 13, 2024
Viswanathan anchors the movie in a kind of quiet emotional seriousness without which it would quickly feel like flavourless chewing gum. A starring feature film role is what she needs now. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreFeb 24, 2024
One senses this is a mundane story that’s trying to be something stranger and more buoyant — the film’s off-kilter sensibility keeps threatening to fade away, like it’s stuck at the tail end of a high. Read full review
60
ABC NewsPeter TraversFeb 23, 2024
Ethan Coen’s lesbian road movie, cowritten with his wife Tricia Cooke who identifies as queer, is raucously funny when it doesn’t go slack and make you wish he’d reunite soonest with his sibling Joel for a bit of the old Coen brothers magic that fails to materialize here. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithFeb 22, 2024
The film is a lesbian-road-trip gangster farce with a hint of political satire, and though it’s admirably offbeat I found it only mildly amusing. Read full review
60
VarietyOwen GleibermanFeb 21, 2024
Drive-Away Dolls is 84 minutes long, and it’s styled to be an easy-to-watch caper, but it’s most definitely a trifle. Read full review
60
ColliderRoss BonaimeFeb 21, 2024
Drive-Away Dolls, the solo directorial debut of Ethan Coen, is an occasionally charming road trip comedy that never quite reaches the wit and brilliance of other Coen projects. Read full review
60
Total FilmNeil SmithFeb 21, 2024
Ethan Coen strikes out on his own with a frivolous frolic that wears its slightness like a badge of honour. Read full review
58
ConsequenceAbby JonesFeb 22, 2024
Underdeveloped characters and a mishandling of their queerness make the film feel both exploitative and disappointingly flat – and while all the whimsy, color, and dance-punk needle drops are welcome, they’re only brief distractions from Drive-Away Dolls’ speedbumps. Read full review
50
The New YorkerRichard BrodyFeb 26, 2024
The result is a mere yarn that, lacking any sense of meaningful retrospect at a quarter century’s distance, remains untethered at either end of its time line and merely goes slack. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 22, 2024
Only Viswanathan, wonderful in “Hala” and others, comes close to locating a tone that makes some human sense inside this wildly uneven material, careening all across the character-to-caricature spectrum. Read full review
50
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenFeb 22, 2024
In Drive-Away Dolls, almost every line is squeezed a bit too hard for cleverness, while the acts of violence frequently cross over into callousness. And although Qualley’s verbal dexterity is impressive (even if it owes a lot to Holly Hunter’s Edwina in Raising Arizona), her performance mostly made me eager to see what she might do in the future, with stronger comic material. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshFeb 22, 2024
The slight and scanty Drive-Away Dolls could dissipate with a gust of wind, but it beats a hasty getaway before that becomes a problem. While its story fails to justify its own existence, it delivers what it says on the tin: dumb, randy fun, even if that feels retrograde in more ways than one. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonFeb 21, 2024
Drive-Away Dolls is frantic rather than inspired, a caper with no sense of the truly madcap. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyFeb 21, 2024
The knockabout humor just isn’t all that funny; its transgressive spirit too often feels forced. Read full review
50
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 21, 2024
It’s certainly not Ethan Coen's strongest film, though it is saved by an especially fantastic performance by Geraldine Viswanathan and a fun story. Read full review
45
The Daily BeastNick SchagerFeb 21, 2024
Aiming for ribald and risqué and coming up with only ruinous humorlessness, it may be the longest 84 minutes anyone will spend in a theater this year. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubMurtada ElfadlFeb 23, 2024
Cooke and Coen manage to make a movie whose only virtue is reminding people of other better films they liked decades ago. There is not enough substance nor laughs to make Drive-Away Dolls anything more than instantly forgotten. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeMar 17, 2024
The film has a boisterous energy, but it’s puerile, phoney and frequently rather cringe. Read full review
40
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMar 14, 2024
Drive-Away Dolls is no disaster. Matt Damon has fun as a hypocritical politician in a last act that cannot be faulted for chutzpah. But nobody will mistake this yellow-pack Coen flick for the real thing. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMar 14, 2024
It’s not entirely without redeeming features. Margaret Qualley’s game lead turn would fit into the joint Coen canon on its own merits, and the final line (yes, I’m reaching, already) does land with a certain Billy Wilder-esque comic grace. Read full review
40
TimeStephanie ZacharekFeb 26, 2024
It tries to be sexy but isn’t; it strives for screwball energy but only ends up being insufferably madcap; it works hard to serve up lashings of black humor, in the tradition of older Coen Brothers movies like Raising Arizona, but you can hear the wheels whirring behind every joke. Read full review
40
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 23, 2024
You’re left enduring a bumpy ride on a road to nowhere, in other words, and neither the film’s wane familiarity nor its welcome, pro-smut good intentions can make the journey worthwhile. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleFeb 22, 2024
Perhaps time will be kind to Drive-Away Dolls; the cast of rising stars seems destined for greatness, and the setting will sharpen into focus the farther we move away from the decade. But it’s hard not to feel that Drive-Away Dolls is the sum of its production history: a decades-old concept that missed its window for relevance. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 22, 2024
Drive-Away Dolls only snaps alive when the ever-reliable Domingo is on camera and — with just a few hushed words and his trademark charisma — he inevitably draws you in with the promise of a movie that never materializes. Read full review
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