Drive-Away Dolls is now in theaters.
By Zachary Greenberg
I’d like to consider myself an avid movie-goer, trying to attend at least one movie a month in the theaters. There’s something about watching a film alongside complete strangers that excites me, like watching a sports game live versus just watching it at home on television. Unfortunately, nothing yet has excited me too much in 2024 to make me rush to the theater, and I realize now that seeing Drive-Away Dolls at the premiere at AMC Lincoln Square is the first movie I’ve seen in theaters this year. And what an experience it was.
I was able to secure two free tickets to the premiere of Drive-Away Dolls, where many members of the cast and other celebrities were present. It was quite the experience to be able to watch a film and then see all of those actors as real people right afterward up close. Not only that, but we also got free popcorn and soda too! Anyways, on to my review of Drive-Away Dolls.
The film felt very much like the plot of Dumb and Dumber (1994), which is my favorite comedy of all time, so that aspect worked fine for me. Two girls, Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Jamie (Margaret Qualley), accidentally accept an opportunity to drive a car down from New York to Tallahassee, Florida. Unbeknownst to them, there’s a special briefcase in the car that the antagonists desperately want. They’re willing to kill and hurt people to get it.
It was a coming-of-age film of sorts for Marian, a prudish lesbian who hadn’t done much sexual exploring before. On the other hand, Jamie was portrayed as promiscuous, making it her mission to break Marian out of her shell along the way to Tallahassee. A major negative for me was that Jamie’s character had a very heavy Southern drawl, which made it difficult to understand what she was saying throughout the film. However, by the second half of the film, I was used to the accent and was able to mostly understand her.
Overall, the movie is a very raunchy film filled with nudity and sexually tense scenes. However, it also had some pretty funny moments and great one-liners sprinkled throughout. If you enjoy comedies like American Pie, Drive-Away Dolls should be enjoyable.
What I didn’t like about the movie was that at times, it felt too strange for me. Many of the transitions were done by utilizing trippy images of swirling colors in between. It was like the transitions used in the Austin Powers franchise, very 70s-vibe – but on crack. It felt like I was watching a scene while high, with so many distorted images and strange music. These transitions sometimes lasted up to a full minute, which is very long considering the whole film is less than an hour and a half.
Additionally, there were a lot of random cameos by famous celebrities who didn’t add much to the film. Pedro Pascal shows up in the first scene, and that’s about it for him for some reason. Miley Cyrus shows up in one of the trippy transition scenes, and I’m not sure why she was there, but it was something sexual and trippy. The only cameo I really enjoyed was Matt Damon, who played Senator Channel. He was phenomenal, and I laughed the hardest during his scenes. Another character who made me laugh out loud was Sukie, played by Beanie Feldstein. Sukie’s character reminded me of Amy from Pitch Perfect, a sassy but hysterical woman. All of her lines were comedic gold, and she really enhanced the film.
There were also two glaring mistakes I caught during the film. In one scene, when Marion and Jamie are enjoying a lovely dinner, Jamie’s glass of champagne, which was at the forefront of the frame, noticeably kept changing levels of fullness. In one shot, it’s brimming near the top, then it’s half full, then it’s back near the top again. If it weren’t so glaring, I wouldn’t care, but it bothered me. Secondly, the film is set in 1999, rightfully so before Y2K. Yet, the villain mentions something about how he wants to protect Senator Chancellor by not letting certain information leak on the internet. I don’t think the internet was in such widespread use as it is today that people were worried about information being leaked online. If the villain had just said that they didn’t want the news leaked, I would’ve been fine with that, but it just seemed like a historical inaccuracy.
Coming out of the film, I felt like I wasn’t the intended audience for this movie, and perhaps that’s why I didn’t love it. I enjoyed certain characters and scenes and found the plot to be fun. It was really cool being at the premiere of the film, and that certainly made me enjoy the movie more. The movie though just didn’t cut it for me to recommend unless reading this substantially piques your interest or you enjoy raunchy comedies.
I give Drive-Away Dolls a C.
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