As seedy as the stories can be when dealing with private eyes and murder, I always want the best for these sorts of neo-noir/slice-of-life films. Honey Don’t is the second entry in married duo Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s self-described “lesbian B-movie trilogy.” While the film does indeed feature a world-weary private investigator and several murders, the screenplay leaves a lot to be desired. Given the amount of driving our lead character, Honey O’Donahue, does in the film, it’s only apt to say that so much of this film feels as though it’s spinning its wheels while searching for a point. Even as a Coen-flavored feature, it’s less about trying to get on the same wavelength of their oddball sense of humor and more of a trifle that doesn’t seem particularly well thought-out.
Margaret Qualley stars as Honey. Introduced, climbing out of bed with another woman and offering no sense of feeling before heading to a crime scene, it’s clear Honey isn’t exactly feeling she can be all she can be as a P.I. in Bakersfield, California. The crime she comes across is a car crash with a dead woman at the bottom of a hill. Was their foul play involved? We’ll soon find out. What we are aware of is the presence of a dangerous cult leader, Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), a cop who can’t stop hitting on Honey, Mary Metakawich (Charlie Day), another cop with a clear crush on Honey, MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), and a mysterious stylish woman riding around on a moped (Lera Abova).
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While Honey is the film’s center, the ensemble cast does speak to the notion of a movie that aims to insert plenty of pieces into the mystery at hand. The nature of a character like Drew Devlin, with one of the more obvious anagrams to work with, suggests he’s clearly a bad element that has everything to do with the corruption coming through this town, but what about everyone else?
Sadly, the film has only a limited number of moves to make this mystery interesting. Given how much is laid out ahead of time, it really comes down to waiting for Honey Don’t! to finally point a finger, rather than let the audience work the case like Honey does to truly figure out what’s going on. It’s a shame given how much talent there is on display, which does include Evans, who fully gets how to balance his inherent charm with the fact that he knows how to play guys like his scumbum character witnessed here.
For her efforts, Qualley is quite good in this film. I had some qualms with her performance in Coen’s previous entry in this dusty trilogy, Drive-Away Dolls, as it felt more like a caricature than a lived-in native of the land. Here, Qualley shines quite a bit at balancing her intelligence with what she knows she’s getting away with based on her appearance. What likely helps is an effort to fill out her interior life. We meet Honey’s sister (Kristen Connolly), as well as her extended family, including a couple of older and younger nieces and nephews. This includes her teenage niece, Corinne (Talia Ryder), who ends up having her own role in the plot.
Fleshing out Honey’s life provides a solid foundation for understanding the world we inhabit, with a surplus of character actors appearing in different scenes, adding color to various story elements. And yet, much of it ends up falling flat. Although some of these storylines could be more intriguing, it becomes apparent that some of the key ones could be dropped entirely and have little effect on the film.
In terms of technical precision, plenty is going on in Honey Don’t’s favor. Drive-Away Dolls had a more psychedelic edge, whereas this film aims for a slicker aesthetic in its editing and shot choices. Nothing to evoke the rapid-fire cool of music videos of a certain age or anything like that, but the slickness of a gumshoe did come to mind. On top of that, Carter Burwell, as always, knows what sort of areas to push when it comes to adding music in all of the right ways for one of these darkly comedic crime dramas.
The film is still just ultimately underwhelming. It’s unsure of which of its characters and ideas needed to be given more focus, which holds the movie back from accomplishing much. At least Drive-Away Dolls had the idea to lean into the exploitative and balloon that up into a grander tale of conservative values versus a more open-minded future. Honey Don’t doesn’t really take us anywhere we haven’t already been, with little to show for it by the time all is well and done. It does feel as though it wants to walk a certain walk, but with a flimsy script at play, it’s hardly getting by on its ability to talk the talk.
Honey Don’t opens in theaters on August 22, 2025.
