don't drink and drive movie review

Don't Drink & Drive (2022)

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Lifetime’s Drunk, Driving, and 17: Is the Movie Rooted in Reality?

Lifetime’s ‘Drunk, Driving, and 17’ is a drama movie that follows a 17-year-old girl named Kim who has an excellent reputation as she has all the great qualities one might look for in one’s child. However, at a house party, when she catches her boyfriend Dan flirting with another girl, she lets jealousy take over and makes the worst decision of her life — drinking and driving. In just a matter of moments, Kim’s drunk self manages to turn her life upside down when she ends up wrecking her car and her life by almost killing a classmate in a head-on collision.

Although the accident happens at Kim’s hands, Dan’s parents, Martha and Tim, also get criticized by the authorities for letting alcohol be served to minors at their house. The Russ Parr directorial features impressive onscreen performances from talented actors like Savannah Lee Smith, Michael Michele, Matt Riedy, David Shae, and Ethan McDowell. The instance of a drink-and-drive case and the consequences that follow are a couple of predominant themes that are not uncommon in real life. So, it is natural for you to wonder if ‘Drunk, Driving, and 17’ is based on real life. Well, let’s explore the same, shall we?

True Story Inspiration for Drunk, Driving, and 17

Yes, ‘Drunk, Driving, and 17’ is partially based on a true story. Touted to be inspired by actual events by the makers, the enthralling and dramatic screenplay is the product of the creative minds and brilliant writing skills of Amber Benson and Richard Kletter. They seemingly took inspiration from true stories of drink-and-drive cases. They tried to portray the true-to-life consequences of underage drinking and house party culture, where the parents allow their minor children to drink with their friends under the impression that they are safe drinking at home.

There have been many accidents in real life due to drinking and driving by teenagers, which is why it is necessary to shed more light on this particular subject. For instance, back on New Year’s morning in 1982, there was quite a similar case of a 17-year-old boy named Kevin Tunell who drank and drove and ended up killing 18-year-old Susan Herzog. A month after the tragedy, Kevin was sentenced to court-supervised probation until he turned 21 and his driver’s license was revoked for the time being. He was liable to end up in jail if he violated any of the terms of his probation. This is just one of many such tragic cases that occur pretty regularly all across the globe.

During a conversation in April 2023 on the Russ Parr Morning Show , Michael Michele, who portrays Martha in the Lifetime movie , talked about what attracted her to accept the role and how she could relate to it. She said, “I was going home every single day having the exact same conversation with my own son. I also had a son, 7 years of age, graduating high school and going to all the Senior High School parties. So I said, well, isn’t this how apropos that I am being asked to do a movie that is mimicking my real life?”

Michele added, “These are conversations. I’m having in my home. Every, every weekend, my son is getting ready to graduate high School in a couple of weeks. And so I would come to do a scene with you, and then I would go home and almost verbatim have the same conversation with my own son.” To reiterate, it would be fair to say that the screenplay might not be based on a specific true story but is inspired by many such real-life stories!

Read More:  Where Was Lifetime’s Drunk, Driving, and 17 Filmed? Who is in the Cast?

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@BAM_MARGERA About a jackass drunk driving and his is one, fuck you! Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat fucking mouth!

To begin with, I offer my sympathy to Ryan Dunn's family and friends, and to those of Zachary Hartwell, who also died in the crash. I mean that sincerely. It is tragic to lose a loved one. I also regret that my tweet about the event was considered cruel. It was not intended as cruel. It was intended as true.

I have no way of knowing if Ryan Dunn was drunk at the time of his death. What I knew before posting my tweet was that not long before his death, he posted a photo on Tumbler showing himself drinking with two friends. I tweeted:  

What did I mean by that? I meant exactly what I wrote. I wasn't calling Ryan Dunn a jackass. In Twitter shorthand, I was referring to his association with "Jackass." I thought that was clear. I note that Bam Margera uses the word "jackass" in the same way in his tweet. [Tuesday p.m.note: Of course there was a double meaning. I was implying that someone who drinks and drives is a jackass. Just as I was when I was drinking.]

The story I read was on the site of NBC Philadelphia, which wrote:

"The one-car accident happened on Route 322 around 2:30 a.m., according to Officer Geiger with West Goshen police. The 2007 Porsche 911 GT3 shot through about 40 yards of trees before it hit the last one and exploded into flames, according to police. The police press release reads, 'Preliminary investigation revealed that speed may have been a contributing factor to the accident'."

The story also reported: "Dunn's passenger, 30-year-old Zachary Hartwell of West Chester, Pa., was also killed. Hartwell worked as a production assistant on the movie Jackass Number Two and starred in Bam Margera's movie Minghags. " Hartwell, who was 30, was newly married.

In stories posted Tuesday morning, it was written that Ryan Dunn reportedly drank three light beers and three shots before he drove away from Barnaby's in West Chester at around closing time. No one said if he had been drinking earlier.

In a touching interview with the NBC station, Bam Margera's mother, April, said Dunn was a fast driver and that she told him to slow down "every day" following a bad accident he was involved in more than a decade ago. "He drove too fast and I yelled at him all the time about that," she said.

In another story, Patrick Carmody, Assistant District Attorney in Chester County, was quoted: "In 2005, Dunn was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and entered a first offender's program that allowed him to clear his record after a certain period of good behaviour,"

I don't know what happened in this case, and I was probably too quick to tweet. That was unseemly. I do know that nobody has any business driving on a public highway at 110 mph, as some estimated -- or fast enough, anyway, to leave a highway and fly through 40 yards of trees before crashing. That is especially true if the driver has had three shots and three beers. Two people were killed. What if the car had crashed into another car?

After I posted my first tweet, Perez Hilton posted an item headlined, "Roger Ebert Responds Insensitively To Ryan Dunn's Death." I read the comments under his item and noted that almost all of them supported me. I tweeted:

This second tweet was widely interpreted on many web sites as me "refusing to apologize." The story of my "refusal" has now gone viral. When I tried to log on to Facebook this morning, I found that my page had been "removed for violating our Terms of Use." That would include, I learned, pages that are "hateful, threatening or obscene." I speculate that my page was flagged by "Jackass" fans. Update: The page was restored Tuesday morning.

Out of this the sane voice April Margera emerges: "He drove too fast and I yelled at him all the time about that."

She was being Ryan's friend.

Friends don't let friends drink and drive.    

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ on Peacock, Ethan Coen’s Unquenchably Horny Lesbian Road Movie

Where to stream:.

• Drive-Away Dolls

M. Emmet Walsh Was The Rare “Character Actor” Who Also Happened To Be The Best Part Of Every Movie He Appeared In

Danny devito is a revered comedy legend, but it’s past time for him to be acknowledged as a vibrant, important director, sam raimi’s singular, sensational career has careened from cult classics to big budget blockbusters, ‘fargo’ season 5 greenlit by fx.

Dunno about you, but if I’m going to watch a throwaway lark, I’d rather it be by one of the Coen brothers than anyone else. Cue Drive-Away Dolls , a solo outing directed by Ethan Coen, co-writing with his wife Tricia Cooke. You may recall, Joel Coen helmed 2022’s The Tragedy of MacBeth , and although the sibling duo who helmed all-timers like The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona , and an all-timer among all-timers, Fargo , they haven’t really “broken up”; they may work together again, but Ethan and Tricia are already filming the follow-up to Drive-Away , both films being part of their planned “lesbian B-movie trilogy.” Both star Margaret Qualley, who here teams with Geraldine Viswanathan for some road-movie silliness that feels really slapped together, and might just be all the better for it.

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open on a nervous man played by Pedro Pascal, the first of a few high-profile cameos that I WON’T GIVE AWAY, SO DON’T CALL THE SPOILER COPS ON ME. He has something in a suitcase that scary men want, and by “scary men” I mean “eccentric weirdos,” since this is a Coen movie, and their movies are always bursting at the seams with those types. Cut to the bedroom of Jamie (Qualley) and Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), who are really going at it . Hard! Like, with lots of screaming and aggressive face-sitting. To call Jamie a horndog is to offhandedly remark that the totality of outer space is pretty big. She’s just unquenchable. Always fire-hot and ready to zoooooooooom. It’s 1999 in Philadelphia, and I don’t know what that really has to do with anything, but you feel like Jamie is still hopping on top of anything that moves here 25 years later. Good for her. She lives life until everything falls apart and she keeps on humping away atop the ash and ruins. 

Jamie’s good friends with Marian (Viswanathan), and ends up crashing on her couch after Jamie and Sukie have a falling-out. Now, where Jamie lets it all hang out – a big reason why Sukie socked her one and gave her the boot – Marian keeps it all in, nice and tight. Very buttoned-up, she is. And that dynamic is perfect for what now? A road trip, bro! Marian’s aunt lives in Tallahassee, so they get a “drive-away” car-delivery gig, which is a loosey-goosey plot device that allows them to unassumingly drive the wrong car cross-country with the aforementioned Pascal Suitcase hidden in the trunk. More on that in a second, because Marian’s plan is to just drive straight down but they end up doing Jamie’s plan, which is to hit a bunch of lesbian dives along the way so Jamie can get laid for the zillionth time and Marian can (hopefully) get laid for the first time in a long time. Marian is reluctant to enjoy anything ever, but Jamie’s persuasive. “This is going to be F-U-N-N fun!” Jamie says, and then they hop in the Dodge and R-U-N-N-O-F-T.

Of course the guys who hid the briefcase – guys led by a chap played by Colman Domingo – want their briefcase back. Off go two thugs (CJ Wilson and Joey Slotnick) bickering and bickering as they trail our protag ladies, who aren’t getting along very well because Marian would rather read Henry James in a fleabag motel than host random ladies for ladysex like Jamie does. Meanwhile, we get some weird psychedelic interludes featuring [REDACTED], and they make sense eventually I think, so just go with it. Some nutty shit happens, stakes are raised, filmmaker indulgences are indulged, we wonder what the hell is the case, and are we laughing all the way? Yeah, pretty much.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There are moments when Drive-Away Dolls drafts on past Coen goofiness – especially Lebowski and Raising Arizona – and an argument could be made that it’s an entire movie inspired by the dildo-chair scene in Burn After Reading . 

Performance Worth Watching: I like Qualley’s loony energy here, but without Viswanathan as her character foil, the film wouldn’t have a little bit of soul to counterbalance the silliness, and the violence, and the sex.  

Memorable Dialogue: Jamie’s treatise on romantic love, via Marian’s inability to find it yet: “I’m not certain, honey darlin’, that you have ever reached deep inside any orifice to scoop out your soul and fling it shamelessly at a fellow human being and humiliate yourself and grovel and weep and feel your ego completely disintegrate, otherwise known as the glory of love.”

Sex and Skin: Tons of it! This is a significantly raunchy film! Rejoice!

Our Take: Nobody in their right mind is going to mistake this ramshackle-ass movie for anything more than a frequently amusing trifle and a celebration of absurdity, in fiction and maybe almost but not necessarily in real life. Drive-Away Dolls is evidence that Ethan may have been the fuel for the Coens’ purest and zaniest comedies, which stretch reality into weird and wonderful nonconformist shapes. The people within the world of Drive-Away are larger than life, speaking in an elevated manner, making each other scream in pain and/or ecstasy (or wherever the twain shall meet) and chasing the silliest MacGuffin on record. You might be able to guess what it is, but that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.

There’s no point to the movie other than to make us laugh, and if it doesn’t land every joke, it lands enough of them to quell any criticisms you killjoys out there might drum up. Maybe there could be a little more dramatic oomph to our leads, but Qualley and Viswanathan play off their character types in a warm and endearing manner while finding some wiggle room for development, and firmly hitting their comedic marks. Sure, there’s some vague politics beneath the rickety floorboards here, because the film is very incredibly unapologetically gay, and that’s political of course, for reasons that seem super extra stupid in the context of this movie. Are the dog-humping gags, jokes about juke joints and the line “These penises are trouble, Jamie” also political? Maybe, only if you decontextualize them, but I’ve already had enough of this attempt to plumb Serious Thoughts from a near-freeform romp. I just want to laugh, so I’ll probably just watch Drive-Away Dolls again.

Our Call: Yes, the Coens are still loons, and not loving them for it is not an option. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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