Josh Reviews Honey Don’t!

I loved Drive Away Dolls, the 2024 film directed by Ethan Coen and co-written with his wife, Tricia Cooke, so I was thrilled that Mr. Coen and Ms. Cooke were reuniting with star Margaret Qualley for another film so quickly.  (Mr. Coen and Ms. Cooke have called Honey Don’t! the second in a planned “lesbian movie B-movie trilogy”.)

Ms. Qualley stars as the titular Honey O’Donahue, a private investigator who discovers, as the film opens, that the new client with whom she was supposed to meet the next day has died in a car crash.  Honey knows that dead young woman, Mia, was afraid of something (or someone), so Honey starts poking around the edges of the case.  This eventually leads to her crossing paths with Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), a sleazy dude who is using his “Four-Way Temple” as a front for an array of bad behavior…

I had a lot of fun watching Honey Don’t.  It’s not the home run that Drive Away Dolls is — the film lost me somewhat in the last act — but it’s still a thoroughly entertaining ride.

Setting a hard-boiled noir story in the California sunshine has worked for many great films before this one (Chinatown comes to mind), but it’s still a strong idea.  And centering this elevated B-movie on lesbian characters — most notably Honey and her cop girlfriend MG Falcone, played by Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Legion, Safety Not Guaranteed, Megalopolis, Agatha All Along) — brings another interesting level to what might otherwise be a familiar type of private detective story.

I thought that Drive Away Dolls had the fun spark of the Coen Brothers’ best earlier work together, films like Blood Simple and Fargo.  It had that balance of horror and violence mixed with comedic moments.  Honey Don’t has a similar tone, and it’s a pleasure.  Some rough stuff happens in this film, but somehow Ethan Coen & Tricia Cooke make it all a ton of fun to watch.  As with Drive Away Dolls, this film has a brisk run-time (a hair under 90 minutes), so it zips along at a pleasingly fast pace.

Margaret Qualley (The Leftovers, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Substance) is a delight as Honey.  I’d love to watch this character in a whole series of private eye films!  Ms. Qualley gives Honey the confidence and swagger of a great P.I. hero — and she’s just as skirt-chasing as the most iconic private detectives from days of yore!  Ms. Qualley has a great handle on the rat-a-tat, somewhat retro-feeling dialogue; she delivers her lines with just the right amount of twinkle in her eye so that the comedic beats land perfectly.  Honey isn’t a spoof character; Ms. Qualley imbues her with with dramatic reality.  This woman is smart and sharp and great at her job; and she is imperfect and has a complicated life the way great P.I. characters always do.

Ms. Qualley and Aubrey Plaza, who plays the cop MG Falcone, have sparkling chemistry together on-screen.  (I wish they had even more scenes together in the movie!)  Ms. Plaza can be so funny, but she’s terrific in this mostly dramatic role.  She imbues MG with strength and toughness and a certain broken quality that works like gangbusters.  (MG’s monologue in bed about her father is incredibly memorable.)

I love seeing Chris Evans get to play jerks, in contrast to his Captain America persona (see Knives Out as a great example), and he’s a lot of fun here as the smarmy, scummy, sex-loving Reverend.  Charlie Day is very funny as the jovial, somewhat clueless police detective Marty.  Billy Eichner kills in a handful of scenes as one of Honey’s clients.  Gabby Beans hits all the right notes as Honey’s (somewhat bored) assistant. Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) is great as Honey’s niece Corinne, who gets involved in the escalating chaos in the film’s second half.  Josh Pafchek is very funny as Shuggie, Reverend Drew’s perpetually non-plussed thug and right-hand-man.

Drive-Away Dolls was set in the nineties.  Honey Don’t! is set in the present day, but the film feels timeless in the way than many of the Coen Brothers’ films do.  (I mentioned, above, Honey’s somewhat retro-feeling, fast-paced chatter, which I enjoyed.)

I like the title, and I enjoyed hearing the song over the closing credits.  (The song was written & performed by Carl Perkins in the fifties.  I first encountered it as performed by the Beatles, on Beatles ’65.)

I praised, above, the way in which this film (and Drive Away Dolls) felt to me like it recaptured the enjoyable tone of some of the Coen Brothers’ great earlier films.  It also captured the way those films often presented a more realistic version of a crime story, rather than a more Hollywood-fake story.  The downside of this is that it made the third act of this film somewhat unsatisfying for me.  I wanted to actually see Honey rescue her niece; I wanted Honey to be more directly involved in the defeat of the Reverend.  After the Reverend is such a jerk to her when she visits him at his church, I really wanted to see her put him in his place, but the movie denies us that joy.  (There’s a scene late in the film in which Honey returns to the church, but the door is locked.  She hears something suspicious and I was ready for her to go around back and investigate, which is what most movie characters would do in that moment, but that doesn’t happen.  On the one hand, I appreciated that probably a real private detective wouldn’t charge into the fray on private property… but it was still something of a letdown that she didn’t!)  This film’s ending wasn’t quite as anti-climactic as No Country For Old Men (a film whose ending made me so angry when I first saw it; someday I need to revisit it to see if I still feel that way), but it wasn’t fully satisfying, either, which is my one ding against this film.

(Well, OK, one more tiny quibble; I feel like a scene is missing between when we first see Honey and MG flirting at the police station, when MG comments that she loves hearing Honey’s click-clacking heels, and the next scene when we see them on a date at the bar.  It feels like we jumped from gentle flirting to the two of them… well, let’s just say going at one another… (go see the movie and you’ll understand what I mean) in the bar in a way that felt shockingly fast to me.)

These are minor complaints overall.  The film is a lot of fun, and very well-made.

I really do hope that Mr. Coen and Ms. Cooke are able to make the third movie in their planned trilogy.  I’ll be there for it!