Honey Don't!

I had some of the lowest expectations in my moviegoing life as I approached 2025's HONEY DON'T!, the second in director/co-writer Ethan Coen's "lesbian trilogy".  Even after the debacle of this one, he threatens another, and despite the unfavorable time I had here, I will certainly check it out.  Out of morbid curiosity, mainly.  And a compulsion to be a completist.  I am a huge fan of a majority of Coen Brothers films.  Since Ethan and Joel split, their output has been good (Joel), and erm, not so (Ethan).  The latter's DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS was the first in said trilogy and the best to be said about it is that it wasn't unwatchable.

Neither is HONEY DON'T, but it is quite deflating.  Another Grade D clone of the Coens' earlier films.  Another attempt to wring dark comedy out of sex and violence.  There's plenty of both in this movie.  In a runtime of less than ninety minutes, there are five sex scenes.  Yes, a few with girl on girl action.  Indeed, with lead actresses Margaret Qualley, who plays private investigator Honey O'Donahue, and Aubrey Plaza, playing a police officer named MG Falcone.  I suspect many viewers will tune in solely for their steamy scenes.

And both actresses are talented and appealing, frequently wasted in film roles.  They have survived this and will continue, I'm certain.  Qualley nicely plays an old school (she still uses a Rolodex) detective with a quietly authoritarian voice who investigates the death of a car crash victim, who it is discovered was stabbed beforehand, and a suspicious local church/cult led by Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans). Is there a connection?  Plaza's usual snark is dialed down a bit.  She and her co-star, uh huh, are very sexy.  I think Qualley and her character deserved a far better movie.

Ethan's wife Tricia Cooke again co-authored the script, and has to shoulder some of the blame for this movie.  The screenplay is truly awful, filled with unresolved and arguably unnecessary plot threads.  Namely the reappearance of Honey's long estranged, unnamed father (Kale Browne, who I remember from the soap opera Another World in the 1980s.  Yeah, don't ask.).  The mystery often doesn't make sense.  It seems like no one cares.  But worse, the humor really thuds, hard.  

If there's any upside it is the aesthetic created by Coen and Ari Wegner.  The film takes place in colorless Bakersfield, California.  The crew does a solid job of evoking the beige, the nothingness.  A suitable locale for this kind of movie.  Too bad there wasn't a good one to play out on it.