PLOT: A dark comedy about Honey O’Donahue, a small-town private investigator, who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church.
REVIEW: If there’s any partnership ending that has upset the film world, it’s the Coen Brothers no longer working together. They seemed to provide the perfect blend of seriousness and humor in a balance that no one else could achieve. And it’s never been more evident that they really completed each other more than with Ethan Coen’s second solo outing with his wife, Tricia Cooke. Honey Don’t! is a film that is more focused on being quirky than actually being impactful, and it really doesn’t work.
Honey Don’t! follows Margaret Qualley’s Honey O’Donahue, a private investigator who’s trying to take a deeper look at one of her clients’ deaths. It’s made all the weirder when it’s clear that a local church had something to do with it. That weirdness only increases once we’re shown all the sexual shenanigans the church is up to. The narrative is presented like a classic detective story, with various narratives interweaving to give us the full picture. But it never really goes past quirky characters and random moments of chaos.
Qualley is good, but she feels shortchanged, despite getting the most screentime of anyone. Chris Evans steals the show as the womanizer Preacher of the Four Way Church. Every scene he’s in is a highlight, as it’s one of the few times that the story actually feels clear and concise. But even that comes to such an abrupt ending that it’s hard to even muster up any sort of care regarding the fates. Aubrey Plaza feels a bit wasted, especially since most of her characterization is that she’s a lesbian, and it doesn’t really move past that. It results in some decent chemistry with Qualley, but little else.
Charlie Day has some fun scenes as a detective that can’t get it through his head that Honey doesn’t like men but, like everything else in this film, it doesn’t really move past surface level. Sadly, with this and Drive Away Dolls, it seems as though Ethan really needs Joel in order to make a great movie instead of just a quirky mess. “Hey, we’ve got lesbians!” may have been intriguing in the ’80s, but it’s just a part of life nowadays and should be treated as such.
I really wanted to like Honey Don’t!, but even at 89 minutes, I was just waiting for this to be over. From a random conclusion, to so many detours that it feels like it doesn’t even know what it wants to be, I just found myself frustrated. This wanted to be Burn After Reading, but its script isn’t strong enough to illicit any kind of reaction. Neither are the characters, who mostly just spout supposedly witty dialogue. It fails to connect and results in a very shallow experience. Here’s hoping the Coens can reunite because the output has been more disappointing than not when they’re apart.
HONEY DON’T! IS PLAYING THEATERS ON AUGUST 22ND, 2025.
