‘Honey Don’t!’ Review: Ethan Coen And Tricia Cooke’s Second ‘Lesbian B-Movie’ Can’t Be Saved By Margaret Qualley Alone

The Coen Brothers were never a filmmaking duo with much time for and/or interest in subtlety, but at least the way they went about deploying ridiculousness in their now-erstwhile collaborations had some zip to it. They enjoyed shoving disposable characters into wood chippers and sending their funniest players out while donning the best “oh, shit” grin ever put to screen. Perhaps, then, it’s not at all coincidental that many of the brothers’ most triumphant cinematic moments involve the least subtle thing known to man: Death. It’s the theme that has persisted in each of their respective, still-young solo directorial careers, with Joel’s The Tragedy of Macbeth revolving around the death of a monarch and subsequent taking of his throne, and Ethan’s Drive-Away Dolls beginning with Pedro Pascal’s decapitation. Joel has yet to follow-up his Shakespearian adaptation, so who’s to say whether or not he’ll offer up something as dark – though this Jack of Spades project starring Josh O’Connor sounds mighty interesting – but Ethan and his wife, Tricia Cooke, have been hard at work crafting increasingly-silly lesbian escapades, and Honey Don’t! is just the next offering on an assembly line that doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

And while there is plenty of death to go around in the Coen-Cooke team’s second film as writing partners, it is queerness that wins the day here, similarly to how it outmuscled its characters’ necessary demises in Drive-Away Dolls just last year. Take, for instance, an early-ish scene in which Honey Dont!’s titular character, Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley, seemingly Coen and Cooke’s muse), gets to know the basement-dwelling cop, MG (Aubrey Plaza), over a drink and a finger-bang at the local watering hole. Their hand-dominated tryst takes place not off-screen, but just beneath the frame’s limits, and when the camera cuts to the interior of Honey’s bedroom, we then witness an evening of sexual pleasure and toy use that will have other lesbian-forward films questioning whether or not anal beads should feature more considerably in their central entanglements. But the point of Coen and Cooke’s out-and-proud comedy – similar to, if somewhat more uneven than Drive-Away Dolls – isn’t the sex; it’s the explicit prominence of the characters’ sexuality, and how deeply stupid those that don’t share such proclivities, if you will, tend to be. (Therefore, it should be no surprise that Charlie Day’s inept detective Marty can’t seem to get it through his already-thin skull that Honey has no interest in his incessant requests for a date.)

It should also be no surprise that Honey Don’t!’s plot hinges on its main character solving a mystery, much like Qualley’s Jamie had to in Coen and Cooke’s first collaboration, and that a good portion of the film doesn’t really bother detailing the circumstances of said mystery at all. The mysterious death of Mia Novotny (Kinna McInroe) begins the film; we see a car that has careened off the road and flipped onto its roof, killing the driver, with which an initially-unidentified woman in cheetah-printed garb clearly has a vested interest. She strolls up to the crime scene with complete abandon, snatches a ring – one displaying a cross with a ruby in the center – off of Novotny’s rigid finger, and motorcycles off to a nearby creek, where she floats nude. Cut to Honey taking on the case, one that evidently involves a sketchy priest named Reverend Drew (a no-holds-barred Chris Evans), a poser who uses his godliness to bed the attractive members of his congregation. But the only reason we know he’s somehow implicated in this crime is because of a ring and Coen and Cooke’s urge to place him in their telegraphed firing line. In other words, should a scumbag be introduced early on in a film that bills itself as a crime caper, he’s probably the guilty party, or is at least being presented as such.

There’s certainly a charm that emanates off of Honey Don’t!, but that’s mainly because of how it feels as though it has been yanked from a bygone era, both cinematically and narratively. Coen and Cooke’s script is both contrived and specific enough to note that the COVID-19 pandemic is still a not-so-distant memory, and the film’s principal players use smartphones, but there’s a timeless quality that allows for viewers to get lost in its labyrinth, even as its map remains displayed throughout. Ari Wegner’s dusty cinematography aids that effort, as does the film’s sound design, with notable emphasis being placed on squeaky styrofoam coffee cups, among other items, that makes the whole picture feel more intimately sown together than its shaky plot might otherwise state. 

But charm can only get you so far, even when your leads are as starry and endlessly watchable as the main few are here. Qualley and Plaza are both afforded showcase-level duties, with the former going to even greater lengths to entertain than she had to in her previous film under Coen’s direction, but not even their camp-adjacent powers can save what remains a piece that is ultimately too basic to ever evolve beyond the feel of a passion project gone sideways. Even Evans’ presence is diluted so dramatically that you never feel his character has emerged from the page. He’s an angry, horny, corrupt priest, but nothing more. Coen and Cooke clearly enjoy their time writing together – plenty of quips suggest the sort of back-and-forth process that leads to cheers in the writer’s room, like Honey’s book club-based excuses for not wanting to date Marty; “We meet a lot. Tough book. Dostoyevsky,” she says. But for such accomplished filmmakers to turn out such a plotty, distracted dud is a travesty that shouldn’t be written off when the parties involved have churned out masterpieces in the past. Here’s hoping everyone had fun, at least.

Honey Don’t is currently playing in theaters courtesy of Focus Features.