Ethan Coen has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants when it comes to making art. Whether that translates to whatever the hell WE, the audience, want is another matter entirely, as this new one, co-created with partner and long-time editor Tricia Cooke, is the blithely inconsequential middle chapter of a proposed trilogy that was kicked off in 2024 with the glibly amusing lesbian exploitation caper, Drive-Away Dolls (née Drive-Away Dykes).
Honey Don’t! reteams with Dolls star Margaret Qualley who stars as power-suited private shamus Honey O’Donahue. She’s investigating the strange death of a female parishioner from a local superchurch run by Chris Evans’ kinky priest Dean. Meanwhile, she strikes up a sexual relationship with Aubrey Plaza’s low-rank basement cop, MG, as the result of some nonchalant and covert finger-banging right in the middle of a busy police drinking den.
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There’s some neat hardboiled patter and a smattering of humour that is never quite able to elicit more than a knowing titter. There’s also the nagging sense that Qualley is too youthful to be playing this world-weary detective who claims to have seen all the angles before and is repulsed by the transgressions of absolutely no-one. The flippant tone also makes it very hard to take any of the more earnestly emotional relationships seriously, such as that between Honey’s wayward emo niece who becomes embroiled in this seamy underworld.
The overriding feeling you glean from Honey Don’t is that it’s an example of two formidable filmmakers working in a register that almost punkishly rejects the intricacy and breathtaking formal panache of their past work. From someone with The Big Lebowski and Miller’s Crossing on their CV, this cheeky noir runaround is sadly missing a few layers of intrigue and almost any satisfying pay off, opting for more of an eye-rolling, Columbo-esque reveal than anything with any lasting impact. And a sex-positive stance and a surfeit of sass can only get you so far in this game.
Coen and Cooke already have the early pieces in place for the final chapter in their lil off-the-cuff trilogy, so there’s still time for them to really pull something out of the bag.
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