Ethan Coen reviews Joel Coen’s movie. Joel Coen reviews Ethan Coen’s movie.

The result? Hilarity.

In 2021, Apple and A24 released The Tragedy of Macbeth, written and directed by Joel Coen. His brother Ethan posted a review on the I Might Be Wrong substack which began this way:

In The Tragedy of Macbeth, long-time Hollywood presence Joel Coen — who has 18 prior films to his credit — takes sole creative control of a project for the first time. The result, not unlike the tale of Macbeth itself, is a tragedy of epic proportions.

In the interest of full disclosure, my editor has requested that I mention that I was Mr. Coen’s writing partner, producer, and creative collaborator on the aforementioned 18 films. I am also his brother. We parted ways prior to Macbeth in a split that the press described as completely amicable. Despite my prior association with Mr. Coen, I feel that I am entirely capable of reviewing his work in a fair and objective way.

Macbeth is Joel Coen’s shittiest movie by several billion light years. If all the elephants in all the world crapped into the same canyon for 100 years, you would still not have a pile of shit half a large as Joel Coen’s dumb-as-a-dog-dick rendering of this classic tale. One can’t watch Macbeth without getting the sense that something is missing; some inspired element that gave Mr. Coen’s earlier work an aura of ebullient genius is absent this time. The wit, verve, and undeniable rugged machismo that characterized the other 18 films in which he happened to be involved are nowhere to be found here. Ultimately, one must conclude that what’s lacking is talent itself.

Consider the very decision to adapt Macbeth. The choice belies deep insecurity; Mr. Coen seems, on some level, to understand that he has the talent God gave a balloon full of piss, and therefore needs to latch onto more talented artists like a lamprey sucking the life out of a majestic blue whale. A less insecure director might have been satisfied with a less esteemed piece of intellectual property, but Mr. Coen glommed onto perhaps the best known play by the world’s most renowned playwright in a move that screams “HELP! THE NO TALENT POLICE ARE RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER! PLEASE, SOMEONE RESCUE ME BEFORE I’M EXPOSED AS A FRAUD WHO SOMEHOW FELL ASS-FIRST INTO A MOVIE CAREER!”

The review goes on from there in very much the same biting spirit. So it figures that when Drive-Away Dolls, directed by Ethan Coen, co-written by Ethan and his wife Tricia Cooke …

… we might expect a response from Joel. And respond he did on the same I Might Be Wrong substack. It begins with this:

Is driving away from something the same as driving towards something? That’s the question that “filmmaker” Ethan Coen asks with his new project, Drive-Away Dolls. But the only place that movie-goers will want to drive after kicking the wheels on this tired turd is straight off a fucking cliff.

In the interest of full disclosure, my editor has requested that I mention that I am Mr. Coen’s brother, and that he negatively reviewed my film The Tragedy of MacBeth on this site two years ago. I have also occasionally collaborated with Mr. Coen in the past. Nonetheless, I feel that I am fully capable of objectively reviewing Mr. Coen’s work, and in fact, I have gone so far as to obtain this notarized Certificate Of Objectivity from the state of California.

Ethan Coen’s Drive Away Dolls is the greatest crime against humanity since The Holocaust. If Stephen King spent a thousand years trying to imagine the most horrible torment a human could endure, he would not come up with anything half as awful as the experience of watching this film. If aliens ever threaten Earth, we should project Drive Away Dolls onto the moon, because the aliens would surely flee the galaxy in much the same way that audiences have fled theatres trying to escape this singularity of shit.

Mr. Coen’s apparent goal — aside from making Tommy Wiseau look like Ingmar Bergman — was to replicate a ’90s B-comedy. That he failed to clear even that subterranean bar is the only interesting thing about the film. It is truly stunning to watch a man set out to make the spiritual descendant of Mannequin 2 and then fail; it’s like watching someone set out for Burger King but ending up eating mustard packets in a janitor’s closet. It would be one thing to fall short of genre classics like The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona, which happen to be movies that Mr. Coen helped type. But the fact that Mr. Coen set his sights astoundingly low suggests that, on some level, he knows that he lacks the talent of a condom full of lard.

What does this battle of scathing reviewer wit portend for possible future Joel Coen … or Ethan Coen … or, dare we hope, Coen brothers’ movies?

Who knows.

For now, we can revel in their no holds barred brotherly bromides.

You may read the rest of Ethan’s review of Joel’s movie here.

You may read the rest of Joel’s review of Ethan’s movie here.

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