Honey Don’t
Starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans
MA15+
3.5/5
The second solo film from Ethan Coen (half of the iconic Coen Brothers duo), Honey Don’t is fun but flimsy and not as good as Ethan’s prior film Drive-Away Dolls.
Small-town private investigator Honey O’Donaghue (Margaret Qualley) investigates a suspicious traffic fatality with a link to a local cult.
Honey Don’t is beautifully shot, the witty dialogue gave me frequent chuckles, and Qualley’s endless charm and allure, along with her anachronistic noir dame style, smooth over Honey’s lack of depth.
Honey begins a steamy relationship with MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), a sardonic policewoman, and as with Drive-Away Dolls, the sex scenes are hot but not exaggerated for the male gaze.
Unlike Drive-Away Dolls, their relationship lacks the friction that made Jamie and Marion’s relationship so engaging.
Honey Don’t is overall low-energy and lacking in urgency.
While I tend to enjoy slow, character-rich slice-of-life films like this, the sparse pacing and loosely-connected plot-threads will bore some viewers to tears (that is, until the jarring climax).
Chris Evans is highly entertaining as cult leader Reverend Devlin (this and Materialists feature two of the best performances of Evans’ career), but his role in the plot is less a red herring and more a red seafood buffet.
“B-movie” is not a bad word in my house: Primitive War, released last week to a criminally low number of sessions and cinemas despite the winning premise of “Vietnam War with dinosaurs”, is a bold-faced B-movie and it’s awesome.
Honey Don’t is the second film in Ethan’s planned ‘lesbian B-movie trilogy’, and in this case it feels like “B-movie” gave Ethan and his wife and co-writer Tricia Cooke a license to not try very hard.
Honey Don’t is a witty, sexy but slack and insubstantial film playing in select Victorian cinemas.
