Ethan Coen is at it again with another entry in his lesbian-doing-crimes saga. Titled Honey Don’t, the black comedy follows Honey O’Donoughue, an amoral private investigator with an insatiable taste for hot women and solving mysteries. Now, I haven’t seen Drive-Away Dolls, but I love Margaret Qualley, and this premise sounded like a lot of fun. The cast looked great, and it looked like a small-town black comedy following the likes of Fargo.
This, unfortunately, is not Fargo. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to like.
The story begins with the dead body of Mia Novotny, a young woman who just so happened to call Honey’s office the day before she died. The unknowns set Honey on the case, with clues leading to the hilariously named Four-Way Temple, led by the smarmy Reverend Drew Devlin, played by Chris Evans. The question soon becomes not if Devlin is involved, but how Novotny really died and what role he played in her death.
The first two acts of this film are fast-paced but, for the most part, serviceable. Everything is largely underbaked, but it’s competent enough to follow what they’re trying to set up. Some scenes really stand out, but it’s mostly a decent little romp. The third act though slows everything down, adding another mystery and recentering the story around the recent addition. Without spoilers, everything from there is a bit of a letdown, with the general slog of it all outweighing the fun and largely unserious tone.
The cast really saves this movie, and Margaret Qualley is doing the most. Her limitless charisma and dry delivery turn some of the more awkward, stilted lines into intentional comedy, and I’m unsure if this movie would have worked at all without an actress like her at its center. Aubrey Plaza is also a lot of fun opposite Qualley, and Chris Evans is probably having the most fun here, just hamming it up in every scene. He really channels the sleaze of his Evil Ex character from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World here, and his scenes made me laugh more than anyone else.
Another positive is that the film looks great. Despite being set in 2025, the gritty small-town aesthetic is palpable in every scene. It’s a delight to look at in nearly every shot, and it really felt like Coen was trying to pay homage to Fargo here and do something very similar but in a different setting. Unfortunately, it mostly ends up being style over substance.
In short, this is a bad movie, but I didn’t have a bad time watching it. Some of the more fun moments kept things interesting, even when the story fell apart and things started to get muddy. I certainly had a better time watching this than other movies I’ve rated at this rating, and it may be worth checking out on streaming for fans, particularly those of Coen’s last entry Drive-Away Dolls. Coen has already announced the next film in this set trilogy, Go Beavers, and if they listen to some of the criticism they’ve received for their last two films, maybe it will be something special. If it’s anything like this though, you may be better off watching something else.
