Buckling Up for Drive-Away Dolls—Plus These Other Road Movies

In Drive-Away Dolls—directed by Ethan Coen and written by Coen and Tricia Cooke—Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) take an impromptu road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, which turns into a crazy caper when they discover they are being chased by a gang of inept criminals.

With a cast that also includes Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Beanie Feldstein, Bill Camp, and Colman Domingo, this free-wheeling adventure turns into a wild ride. “It's a queer road trip movie…that doesn't take itself too seriously, and that's very lighthearted and fun,” Cooke tells Collider.

To celebrate this fun addition to the road movie tradition, we are celebrating some of our favorite cross-country jaunts, from a search for a new home to an apocalyptic free-for-all.

Get tickets now for Drive-Away Dolls, in theaters this Friday!

Away We Go

In Sam Mendes’ comedy Away We Go, expectant parents Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) tour the United States and Canada to find the right place to raise a family. “The movie is about what they see, and what they learn,” Mendes tells the Hollywood Interview. Crisscrossing the country from Phoenix to Tucson to Madison, the pair discover that each new locale provides a humorous example of how not to raise a child. With a cast that includes Catherine O’Hara, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Allison Janney, the film’s trip provides, according to the AV Club, “a subtler, more enriching study of parenthood—its joys, its surprises, and the sheer heartbreaking fragility of the whole enterprise.”

Watch Away We Go on Apple TV or Amazon.

Half Brothers

In Luke Greenfield’s Half Brothers, two siblings who have never met—Renato (Luis Gerardo Méndez) and Asher (Connor Del Rio)—learn they are related at their father’s deathbed. In 1994, Flavio (Juan Pablo Espinosa) left his young son Renato behind in Mexico, promising to return once he’d made his fortune. Unfortunately, fate and another family made that return impossible. Before Flavio passes, however, he promises his sons that everything will be revealed if they take a road trip together. “It’s a scavenger hunt of sorts,” says writer/producer Eduardo Cisneros in the production notes. “Every time they get to a certain spot, they learn something they didn’t know about their father and his life.” For Latinx Lens, the trip makes for “a funny, moving film driven by two good performances amplifying the message of inclusivity, family, and the importance of various perspectives.”

Watch Half Brothers on Apple TV or Amazon.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

When you learn that the world is about to end, what else do you do but set off on a road trip? Well, Dodge (Steve Carell) and Penny (Keira Knightley), the unlikely duo at the heart of Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, make that very call. As Roger Ebert writes, “The destination of this trip isn't really the point. Road trips are about who you meet along the way.” During their journey, the two witness the strange, often hilarious ways different people—played by Patton Oswalt, Connie Britton, Rob Corddry, Gillian Jacobs, and Melanie Lynskey, among others—deal with the emotions of confronting the apocalypse. For Gizmodo, “The movie manages to deliver an unabashedly hopeful story about two ordinary people who meet death by making new human connections.”

Watch Seeking a Friend for the End of the World on Apple TV or Amazon.