Honey Don’t!, 2025.
Directed by Ethan Coen.
Starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Charlie Day, Lera Abova, Jacnier, Gabby Beans, Talia Ryder, Kristen Connolly, Josh Pafchek, Don Swayze, Lena Hall, Alexander Carstoiu, Kale Browne, Christian Antidormi, Billy Eichner, Kinna McInroe, Sean J. Dillingham, Jude Atencio, Sean Philip Glasgow, Donny Ness, and Gloria Sandoval.
SYNOPSIS:
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.
There is a brief moment where Honey Don’t! – the second collaboration between Ethan Coen, his wife Tricia Cooke, and star Margaret Qualley – appears to be getting at some point or purpose to its story, with dialogue directly juxtaposing the sexually free natures of private detective Honey O’Donohue (Qualley) and slimy Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans).
Both of them take up intimacy partners within their line of work; old-fashioned when it comes to her job, but not in modern times, Honey begins a kinky tryst with police station worker MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza) and keeps it separate from her investigations and without letting her sexual adventures get in the way of her skills. Meanwhile, Drew uses his position of power and twists religious doctrines into a manipulative mantra to get equally kinky with whatever lonely, vulnerable souls looking for a new place of belonging he finds attractive. This amounts to roughly two minutes and one scene of something interesting going on in the narrative, which, unlike their first collaboration, Drive-Away Dolls, is missing some big laughs.
Honey Don’t! introduces a mystery with a mysterious French woman, Chere (Lera Abova), sifting through the site of a fatal car accident and rummaging through the victim’s belongings, collecting something for someone. It’s a case for Honey to work alongside the police department, typically reporting to Marty Metakawitch (Charlie Day), a harmless goofball who can’t help himself from repeatedly trying to get her number, even though she repeatedly reminds him she prefers women. The fact that one of the only decent running jokes in an LGBTQ comedy comes from a straight man essentially pestering for a date isn’t a good sign; Charlie Day can make just about anything work. However, no one within the talented ensemble can make the rest of the movie worthwhile.
To put it bluntly, there are too many other ideas going on here that not only always fit into the narrative, but aren’t given enough time to breathe or amount to anything inside an 88-minute running time. Roughly ten of those minutes are also opening credits (which take a while to get through as they are fused into some cleverly elaborate production design showing off numerous locales of this small town) and ending credits. At a certain point, the central mystery practically feels dropped for another one involving the disappearance of Honey’s problem child niece, Corinne (Talia Ryder), who is dating a physically and emotionally abusive MAGA jerk.
Also orbiting these mysteries are characters caught up in drug-running going south, consisting of subplots that truly have no purpose, and reach the point of working mean-spirited gags into the deaths of innocents. The film is constantly pulling itself into so many different directions that even its protagonist starts to feel like an afterthought and absent for extended periods of time (when one considers how short the movie is). Honey has also been hired by Mr. Siegfried (Billy Eichner) to obtain information on visual evidence that his partner is cheating on him, which she isn’t necessarily making a point to dig into.
Aside from the occasional scattered laugh, one of the only bright spots here is the chemistry between Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza, each of whom has a different relationship with their class and sexual identities. However, even that builds to nonsense that is only mildly shocking for how little sense it makes. Considering all of these people feel like shells of characters, it doesn’t lend any excitement to the story. The entire narrative here is hanging on by a thread: Honey Don’t! (see this movie).
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
