Review: HONEY, DON'T!

 by Rob DiCristino

Ethan Coen’s latest solo effort proves that two are better than one.

Private investigator Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) arrives at the scene of a deadly car accident outside of Bakersfield, California. Detective Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day) is there to meet her. They exchange a little friendly banter — Honey rebuffs Marty’s advances by reminding him, again, that she’s into girls — and the PI concludes that this case warrants a closer look. There seems to be a connection between the victim and Reverend Drew (Chris Evans), a charismatic huckster who uses his influence to run drugs and seduce the more vulnerable female members of his congregation. Honey’s assistant (Gabby Beans) encourages her to get a life, but aside from checking in with her burnt-out sister (Kristen Connolly, whose Heidi has more kids than she can count) and having meaningless trysts with local girls like Officer Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), Honey doesn’t have a whole lot with which to fill her personal hours. No, she’d rather solve a case, and when her teenage niece (Talia Ryder as Corinne) goes missing, Honey realizes that this could be her biggest one yet.

Honey, Don’t! sounds like a damn good Coen brothers movie, right? A pulpy vibe. An indelible setting. A cast of memorable characters spinning folksy witticisms, usually while they’re shooting at or having sex with each other. And for most of its brisk eighty-five minutes, Ethan Coen’s sophomore solo film — which, like 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls, he co-writes with producer/spouse Tricia Cooke — feels every bit the enchanting paperback noir we’ve come to expect from one of our best working auteurs. Honey O’Donahue is a brassy dame who wields shotguns and dildos with equal precision, a no-nonsense pro whose devotion to her work would surely get exhausting were it not her only source of fun. Her chemistry with the world-weary Falcone is palpable, and their scenes have a sexual ferocity born just as much of mutual attraction as of mutual restlessness with their dead-end lives. Reverend Drew is the perfect Coen boob, a bumbling pervert so convinced of his own invincibility that he couldn’t see the end coming if you mailed it to him.

But as with Drive-Away Dolls before it, there’s a distinct lack of heft and cohesion to Honey, Don’t! that will have Coen devotees wondering how much longer these solo projects are going to go on before the brothers reunite for their next masterpiece. It’s not that Ethan and Tricia Cooke don’t have a chemistry all their own — there’s an agility to their dialogue that reminds us just how neurotic the brothers’ shared work can be — and it’s not that Ethan needs help staging scenes or directing actors. Margaret Qualley was born to be a Coen heroine, and we’ve been dying for Chris Evans to play more dipshits like Reverend Drew since he put down Cap’s shield. Hell, even Charlie Day as a caricature his It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia alter-ego would come up with for a scheme works because it’s just so exciting to have him in the fold. The problem is that Honey, Don’t! can’t seem to decide what to “do” with any of these wonderful ingredients. The mystery isn’t mysterious. The double-crosses feel unmotivated. And what is that sexy French lady (Lera Abova) even doing here?

This shapelessness is more frustrating because Coen and Cooke — the latter of whom is queer; they call theirs a “non-traditional” marriage — clearly have something to say about the role of women in male-dominated workplaces, the manipulation of vulnerable women in patriarchal systems, and the dangers of queer expression in rural America. The film’s best scene is a post-coital conversation where Honey and Falcone share their coming out stories and lament how callous they’ve had to become just to survive in a world where women are forced into willing victimization by abusers like Honey’s father (Kale Browne) and Corinne’s boyfriend (Alexander Carstoiu). Falcone’s seething brutality finally erupts in the last act — as ever, Plaza oscillates between surly and sultry with Olympic-level dexterity — and that should solidify a connection between the disparate story threads. But besides slapping a “I Have a Vagina and I Vote” sticker over a MAGA one, Honey’s own ideological journey is so ill-defined that we’re never sure what she actually takes away from her ordeal.

There’s nothing wrong with an august icon like Ethan Coen cranking out playful larks just for fun, especially if it means he gets to flex creative muscles with another one of his nearest and dearest collaborators. But for a voice as consequential as his, it’s also hard not to worry that Drive-Away Dolls and Honey, Don’t! are steps in the wrong direction, exercises in self-parody that dilute the work he and his brother have been doing for so many decades. Is that totally unfair of me to say? Probably! Should Ethan and his wife be allowed to make whatever they want to make? Hell yes! Is it kind of insane that I’m complaining about a movie in which Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza have, like, really hot sex? Almost certainly! But the Coens are Important to Cinema, and we can’t deny that there is a ticking clock: They’re approaching their seventies now, and — not to put too fine a point on it — there are only so many opportunities left for them to close out a pair of Hall of Fame careers on a high note. Plus, we can’t keep wasting Margaret Qualley like this. She deserves better.

Honey, Don’t! hits U.S. theaters on Friday, August 22nd.