★★ (2 out of 4)
I’d like to see a movie that explains why brothers Joel and Ethan Coen parted ways as filmmakers. Together, they were unstoppable. Separately? Something flat and fizzled, such as “Honey Don’t!,” directed by Ethan Coen from a script he wrote with his wife Tricia Cooke. It’s about a private eye (Margaret Qualley) who invites a cop (Aubrey Plaza) to her home for sexytime. The true crime is how this vibe disguised as an actual movie thought it could get away with the sham.
Ethan described “Honey Don’t!” as a “lesbian B movie,” not unlike the 2024 Mr. and Mrs. Coen collaboration, “Drive Away Dolls,” which was better but not by much. That road trip comedy also starred a friskier Qualley this time as a same-sex curious traveler determined to stop at every lesbian bar from Pennsylvania to Florida. There’s a theme here.
What do Coen and Cooke, parents of two, know about a lesbian lifestyle? “Tricia's queer and sweet and I'm straight and stupid," Ethan has said of their nontraditional marriage—each has separate partners. Does that help? If so, hit Comments and enlighten me.
Details from anal beads to dildos come in for their closeups in 'Honey Don’t,' but the only thing shocking...is that Coen and Cooke don’t seem to realize that a movie never feels more tame than when it's trying most to shock.
Back to “Honey Don’t,” in which Qualley (sublime in the non-lesbian horror of “The Substance”) plays Honey O’Donahue, a shamus from Bakersfield, California trying to figure out if the roadside death of a potential female client was really accidental. Qualley flounces prettily in slinky frocks and red heels but it’s only a distraction from the gaping holes in the plot.
Plaza’s cop, MG, tries to help Honey, sort of. No help at all is a miscast Chris Evans as Reverend Drew, a church leader (he says) who runs a sexual sweep through his congregation while dealing drugs as a side hustle. Captain America would blush, which I guess is the point.
None of this leads to anything coherent other than trying to introduce lesbian sex into film genres that traditionally exclude it, such as film noir and road-trip comedies. Details from anal beads to dildos come in for their closeups in “Honey Don’t,” but the only thing shocking, besides the disappointing thud of an ending, is that Coen and Cooke don’t seem to realize that a movie never feels more tame than when it's trying most to shock.
The announcement that a third Coen/Cooke lesbian film called “Go Beavers” is on the way to complete a planned trilogy comes off more as a threat than a promise. Insert sad emoji here.