A private investigator is drawn into a series of murders linked to a church and its sinister minister.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ethan Coen
Starring: Margaret Qualley, Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Billy Eichner, Talia Ryder, Gabby Beans, Kristen Connolly
Given how awful his solo directorial debut, 2024's Drive-Away Dolls, was, you might read the title of Ethan Coen's latest effort as a piece of advice to any prospective viewers. It's the second in a proposed "lesbian b-movie trilogy" from Coen and his co-writing wife Tricia Cooke, and it sees the director reteam with Margaret Qualley, but it's never as juvenile and irritating as its predecessor. Gone is the immature obsession with sex jokes, replaced with some genuinely clever dialogue that simultaneously parodies and pays tribute to hardboiled detective movies.
If Drive Away-Dolls was Coen and Cooke's homage to '70s Grindhouse thrillers, Honey Don't! sees the couple riff on the many detective shows that captivated millions of viewers throughout that decade. It's something of a lesbian update of The Rockford Files with a post-Tarantino comic tone. Qualley is Honey O'Donahue, a wisecracking detective likely inspired by Kathleen Turner's portrayal of VI Warshawski. When a prospective client fails to show up for an arranged meeting due to being found dead in her car, Honey conducts an investigation despite having no means of getting paid to do so.
As is standard with detective movies and TV shows, Honey's investigation leads to a series of encounters with various oddballs. At the centre of it all is Reverend Drew (Chris Evans), a seedy preacher with a side line in drug trafficking. Honey begins an affair with MG (Aubrey Plaza), a cop at the local precinct where Honey fends off the clueless advances of detective Marty (Charlie Day) while fishing for info on her adopted case.
There are various subplots involving Honey's teenage niece Corinne (Talia Ryder) and her abusive boyfriend (Alexander Carstoiu); a French drug dealer (Lera Abova) with a Louise Brooks bob; Hector (Jacnier), a young assistant of Rev Drew who finds himself marked for a hit; and a mysterious old man (Kale Browne) who seems to be stalking Corinne. There are enough subplots to fuel an entire season of a TV show, and ironically this whole setup might have worked better as a season of the small screen Fargo spinoff. But there's just too much to cram into Honey Don't!'s 90 minutes. Every subplot and supporting character is ill-served here, and some of them are dead within minutes of being introduced. At times it's confusing as to who exactly we're supposed to be invested in here. Introducing so many characters would make sense if this were the pilot of a prospective TV show, but it seems pointless when we're never going to spend any more time with any of these people.
At least Qualley gets to have some fun here with a role that fills her mouth with the sort of lines Leigh Brackett would approve of. Qualley's detached, sardonic performance owes much to the counter-culture private dicks of the '70s like Elliot Gould's unkempt Philip Marlowe in Altman's The Long Goodbye. The setting of Bakersfield, California, a town that feels stuck in the '70s, adds to the sense that we're watching a story play out in another era. Qualley and Plaza combine their sarcastic personas to good effect, and unlike Drive-Away Dolls, the sex isn't something we're asked to giggle at here.
But for all its subplots, Honey Don't! flails around in search of a central hook. There are so many distractions and detours that you'll probably have forgotten the mystery Honey is attempting to solve by the halfway point. It all resolves in an unconvincing manner, throwing in a twist executed in such a half-baked fashion that it forces an actor to deliver a confession that seems so implausible we're not sure if they're actually telling the truth. If Honey Don't! was a TV pilot it would benefit from a network reining in Coen and Cooke's rambling tendencies. Qualley's Honey is an engaging enough protagonist to make you tune in on a weekly basis to follow her exploits. I'm just not sure this particular exploit is worth tuning in for this week.
Honey Don't! is in UK/ROI cinemas from September 5th.
