Drive-Away Dolls: Unapologetic trash

Drive-Away Dolls (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for full nudity, violence and relentless profanity and sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is the smuttiest film I’ve seen in quite awhile.

 

That might have been enough to discourage any sort of endorsement ... but, well, y’see, this flick also is pretty damn funny.

 

When a flat tire forces James (Margaret Qualley, left) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan)
to check the trunk for a spare, they find something ... rather unexpected.

For folks with a deranged sense of humor, that is.

(Guilty as charged.)

 

Those familiar with the Coen brothers’ sensibilities will recognize the tone and territory, although this time out Ethan Coen is directing on his own, from a seriously daft script he co-wrote with wife Tricia Cooke. They deliberately set out to bring modern sensibilities to the sort of gratuitously sleazy 1960s drive-in fare that film critic Joe Bob Briggs (aka John Irving Bloom) championed in the 1980s and ‘’90s. (Motorpsycho and Bad Girls Go to Hell are cited in this film’s production notes. I’ve yet to have the pleasure.)

 

The result is an aggressively vulgar, noir-ish blend of smutty sex, nasty criminal behavior and screwball comedy: definitely not for the faint of heart or sensitive of mind.

 

The year is late 1999, the city Philadelphia. A late-night prologue finds an extremely nervous man (Pedro Pascal) in a dive bar, clutching a silver metal briefcase while awaiting contact from another party.

 

What follows does not go well for him.

 

Elsewhere, the cheerfully uninhibited, hypersexual Jamie (Margaret Qualley) is caught cheating on her girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). Jamie couldn’t be faithful if her life depended on it; she’s much too fond of one-night hook-ups. Even so, the resulting break-up leaves her at loose ends.

 

Jamie’s best friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) — also gay, but in a much quieter way — is dissatisfied with her life and current employment. Her solution: quit the job and travel to Tallahassee, to visit her bird-watching Aunt Ellis (Connie Jackson). Marian begs Jamie to tag along; she doesn’t need much persuading. A road trip would give both women time to re-think some stuff.

 

But money is tight, so they decide to offer their services at a drive-away car service, where those needing to go from A to B can transport a vehicle one-way, for another client.

My Salinger Year: Book it!

My Salinger Year (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.7.21

This is a valentine to writers.

 

Director/scripter Philippe Falardeau’s gentle drama — adapted from Joanna Rakoff’s 2014 memoir, and available via Amazon Prime — is as delightful as her book. Imagine a less acerbic take on The Devil Wears Prada, set instead in New York’s mid-1990s literary world, and boasting a truly droll (mostly) off-camera supporting character.

 

Finding it increasingly difficult not to empathize with so many of the adoring fans who
write passionate letters to J.D. Salinger, Joanna (Margaret Qualley) grieves over
the way this correspondence is treated by the author's literary agency.

The charm of Rakoff’s memoir derives from her witty, often self-deprecating glimpse back at her impulsive, fresh-faced younger self. Falardeau maintains this authorial presence by granting star Margaret Qualley (as Joanna) plenty of narration: both off-camera voice-over and, rather cheekily, with occasional break-the-fourth-wall glances at us viewers. Cinematographer Sara Mishara frames her in a lot of tight close-ups.

 

In most cases, so much narration would become a tiresome gimmick, but not here: Qualley is so endearing, so wide-eyed and ingenuous, that we can’t spend enough time with her.

 

The story begins as Joanna impulsively abandons UC Berkeley’s graduate school, without a formal farewell to her musician boyfriend (Hamza Haq, as Karl), and moves to Manhattan with dreams of becoming a poet (having placed two pieces in the Paris Review). Lacking a job or place to live, she moves in with tolerant best friend Jenny (Seána Kerslake).

 

Joanna makes the rounds, and eventually sits across from Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), who heads her own modest literary agency. It’s a stubborn remnant of the mid-century publishing world, with plush, wood-paneled offices occupied by professionally dressed staffers who still rely on typewriters and Dictaphones, and where agents doze after three-martini lunches.

 

Margaret, needing an assistant, is impressed by Joanna’s enthusiasm. “Be prepared for long hours,” Margaret archly warns. “A lot of college graduates would love this job.”

 

The work load does prove grueling, particularly when Joanna — wholly unfamiliar with Dictaphones — initially can’t transcribe more than two or three words at a time. (I’ve been there; I recall how gawdawful that process was.) But while Margaret is stoic and old-fashioned, her work-related demands aren’t unreasonable; she’s far from the savage martinet Meryl Streep made Miranda Priestly, in The Devil Wears Prada.

 

The “surprise” lands when it turns out that Margaret has long represented J.D. Salinger, whom she — and everybody else in the office — refers to as Jerry. Joanna is tasked with processing his voluminous fan mail, all of which must be answered via decades-old form letters. 

 

All the fan mail then is shredded: which is to say, Salinger never sees it. As he wishes.

 

Margaret therefore is less the reclusive Salinger’s literary agent — he hasn’t published anything since a short story in 1965 (!) — and more his protector. “Never, ever give out his address,” she cautions.

 

The Nice Guys: Abominable

The Nice Guys (2016) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for violence, sexuality, nudity, drug use and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang

A few minutes into this film, as we’re getting a sense of scruffy private investigator Holland March (Ryan Gosling), he attempts some late-night breaking and entering by wrapping his hand in a cloth, in order to punch out a glass door pane. He nonetheless slashes his wrist quite badly — the likely result, in real life — and we chuckle as he nearly faints at the sight of his own blood.

Meet Dumb and Dumber: Jackson Healey (Russell Crowe, left) and Holland March (Ryan
Gosling) find themselves enmeshed in a missing-persons case that leaves them baffled.
They should just let Holland's daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), take over; she's much
smarter than both of them combined.

Somewhat later, a 13-year-old girl gets thrown through a plate-glass window. Miraculously, she survives without even a scratch.

Interesting juxtaposition, donchathink?

It also begs the obvious question: Have we become so callous, as a society, that filmmakers assume we’ll be entertained by the sight of a helpless girl body-slammed through glass?

I’d like to think not, since the blame more properly can be directed at the repulsive schmuck who vomited up this tasteless excuse for big-screen popcorn thrills: director/co-scripter Shane Black.

Black established his Hollywood rep back in 1987, with the deservedly popular Lethal Weapon. Unfortunately, his subsequent action thrillers became dumber, noisier and appallingly mean-spirited, climaxing — at the time — with 1991’s indefensibly dreadful Last Boy Scout. Black unleashed one more bomb with 1996’s The Long Kiss Goodnight, and then wisely dropped out of sight for a decade.

When he resurfaced with 2005’s engaging Kiss Kiss Bang Bang — adapting a Brett Halliday mystery novel, and also making a decent directorial debut — Black appeared to have learned his lesson. The results also were good just a few years ago, when he helmed and co-scripted Iron Man 3.

Based on his newest film, though, Black was just building up enough cred to trick some studio — in this case, Warner Bros. — into letting him regress to his bad ol’ self.

So ... how tasteless is The Nice Guys?

It opens with the nauseating tableau of a horny adolescent boy running to the scene of a car crash, and then staring at the driver — a bloodied porn star, her voluminous breasts exposed — as she slowly dies. Black and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot turn us into unwilling voyeurs as well, by making sure those naked boobs are quite well displayed.

March’s constant companion is his 13-year-old daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice, who deserves so much better than this), who spends the entire film exposed to drugs, naked partygoers, porn flicks, appalling violence and a slew of very, very bad people. She also swears a lot, and employs an impressive string of vulgar sexual euphemisms. All of which are played as laugh lines.