{"id":164041,"date":"2025-08-21T15:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T15:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/164041\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T15:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T15:02:08","slug":"honey-dont-review-sleazy-crime-caper-is-a-hot-mess-just-as-intended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/164041\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Honey Don’t!’ review: Sleazy crime caper is a hot mess \u2014 just as intended"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cHoney Don\u2019t!\u201d<\/a> is a smutty desert mystery in which the detective, Honey O\u2019Donohue (Margaret Qualley<\/a>), never gets around to solving the central crime. She\u2019s too busy seducing women and swatting down randy men. I\u2019d call the opening murder a red herring except it\u2019s really more like a fish left to cook in the blinding Bakersfield sun.<\/p>\n

The second film co-written by Ethan Coen<\/a> and his collaborator and wife Tricia Cooke<\/a> (the first was 2024\u2019s \u201cDrive-Away Dolls\u201d<\/a>), it\u2019s less preoccupied by the challenge of who\u2019s responsible for that corpse than by its own overarching question: Why not? Why not let Margaret Qualley prove she has the electricity to power an audience through any plot? Why not pivot from \u201cThe Big Lebowski\u201d<\/a> and \u201cO Brother, Where Art Thou?\u201d<\/a> to an announced trilogy of tatty lesbian exploitation pictures? Why not, when a couple has earned the industry clout to shoot the script they want with the cast they want, make exactly the movie they want, even if this pulpy B-picture isn\u2019t very good? Who\u2019s going to tell them, honey don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

To be clear, there\u2019s enough to like in \u201cHoney Don\u2019t!\u201d to get you through its 89-minute running time. I\u2019d watch Qualley stride around barking at people for twice as long and her supporting cast, which includes Aubrey Plaza<\/a> as Honey\u2019s latest lover and Chris Evans<\/a> as an oily pastor, is delivering at top level, i.e., Coen-worthy. (Newer talent Josh Pafchek pockets his scenes as a moronic Australian brute.) The script has several zingers that are so good you want to applaud right in your seat, particularly an insult Honey slings at her estranged daddy (Kale Browne). Even the extended intro credits have a witty energy that makes you forgive that they\u2019re tap dancing to pad the length.<\/p>\n

Still, as with the sillier \u201cDolls,\u201d which also starred Qualley as a hot-to-trot queer queen, the film is so shaggy that it feels longer than it is. I finished both movies double-checking my watch in astonishment that they really were under an hour and a half.<\/p>\n

Qualley\u2019s Honey is a headstrong investigator who is so independent, she refuses to let her secretary (Gabby Beans<\/a>) make her a cup of coffee. Frankly, she\u2019s not that impressive as a private dick. Honey is only passingly curious why a client died before their first meeting and so predominately distracted by tangental side quests \u2014 her troubled teen niece (Talia Ryder<\/a>), her dalliances with Plaza\u2019s husky lady cop \u2014 that the resolution doesn\u2019t involve much brilliant deduction. We know from the first scene that Honey needs to keep a close eye on a mysterious stranger named Cher (Lera Abova<\/a>). Ultimately, the French femme fatale catches her attention for other reasons.<\/p>\n

Across town, the corrupt Reverend Drew (Evans) is swaying his parishioners to sleep with him in the name of godly submission. \u201cI want to see your bosoms jouncing during fellowship,\u201d he commands a member of his flock. The preacher is one of the biggest sinners in Bakersfield, not merely because both he and Honey may as well be using the phone book as a checklist of conquests. A normal thriller would frame their dynamic as cat versus mouse. Here, it\u2019s more like plague and vaccine. Honey is immune to his sales pitches for heterosexuality and holy salvation.<\/p>\n

Honey is a brazenly preposterous creation: a 21st century woman who insists on using a Rolodex, something that was headed toward extinction before Qualley was even born. Striding through brush in seamed stockings and high heels \u2014 and changing wardrobe multiple times a day just because she can \u2014 she\u2019s the only character who never breaks a sweat (except in the bedroom).<\/p>\n

Qualley keeps her cool from head to toe: eyebrows stern, line deliveries cucumber-crisp. Like a brassy classic dame, she says exactly what she means. When the local homicide officer, Marty (Charlie Day<\/a>), makes a pass at her, she bluntly replies, \u201cI like girls.\u201d The guy doesn\u2019t listen \u2014 he just keeps pestering her \u2014 which makes their dynamic play like some sort of clunky runner about how men are dense.<\/p>\n

Marty\u2019s pursuit is that. But Honey\u2019s retort is also how the real-life Cooke shot Coen down the first time her future husband asked her out on a date. More than anything, it\u2019s evidence that \u201cHoney Don\u2019t!\u201d primarily exists as the couple\u2019s own affectionate in-joke. \u201cTricia\u2019s queer and sweet and I\u2019m straight and stupid,\u201d Coen said last year<\/a> in an interview with the Associated Press. Both describe their three-decades-plus marriage as \u201cnontraditional.\u201d Both also insist that they\u2019re making these pulp flicks as a unit and don\u2019t care who gets credit for what, claiming that Coen is cited as the director of \u201cHoney Don\u2019t!\u201d simply because he\u2019s the one in the DGA.<\/p>\n

Coen is, of course, half of another twosome with his brother Joel that also enjoys defying labels. Their filmography zigzags between thrillers and comedies, lean exercises and awards heavyweights, never making the same movie twice. It\u2019s as though their guiding compass is to stay ahead of audience expectations. The pair has been on a creative break since 2018\u2019s \u201cThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs\u201d<\/a> and it\u2019s been tempting to use their separate projects as an opportunity to examine who each sibling is as an individual. If you watched Joel Coen\u2019s black-and-white \u201cThe Tragedy of Macbeth\u201d<\/a> in a double feature with \u201cHoney Don\u2019t!\u201d you\u2019d leave convinced that the elder Joel was the stylist and the younger Ethan the wit \u2014 that Joel wears a monocle and Ethan a grease-painted John Waters mustache.<\/p>\n

But they might just be tricking us again. It\u2019s just as valid to say the brains behind those two movies are William Shakespeare and Tricia Cooke, especially the latter as she seems to have had the stronger hand in shaping the two sexy Qualley capers we\u2019ve seen thus far. (The third already has a title: \u201cGo Beavers.\u201d)<\/p>\n

As sloppy as it is, there\u2019s no denying that \u201cHoney Don\u2019t!\u201d works as a noir with a pleasant, peppery flavor. Yet, there\u2019s a snap missing in its rhythm, a sense that it doesn\u2019t know when and how its gags should hit. When a playboy (Christian Antidormi) swaggers up to a bar and orders a shot of cinnamon schnapps, the line clangs like it landed better on the page. A few scenes later, a low-level drug dealer goes home to his Bolivian grandmother (Gloria Sandoval<\/a>) who is such a caricature \u2014 bowler hat, lap full of dried chili peppers \u2014 that you suspect the character was designed to get more of a laugh. I did giggle when Honey visited her sister, a worn-out hausfrau named Heidi (Kristen Connolly<\/a>), and kids kept popping out of the corners of her home one after another like rabbits from a hat.<\/p>\n

The majority of the townsfolk that Honey encounters are such incurious mouth-breathers that the humor can feel hostile. The film\u2019s worldview is that most people are, as Coen describes himself, straight and stupid. That\u2019s worked out well enough for him. He\u2019s won four Oscars and, more importantly, the ability to do whatever he darned well pleases.<\/p>\n

‘Honey Don’t!’<\/p>\n

Rated:<\/b> R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, some strong violence, and language<\/p>\n

Running time:<\/b> 1 hour, 29 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing:<\/b> In wide release Friday, Aug. 22<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHoney Don\u2019t!\u201d is a smutty desert mystery in which the detective, Honey O\u2019Donohue (Margaret Qualley), never gets around…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[76527,40226,94659,1582,276,7700,9069,2385,94658,93414,55674,44045,2961,224,5337,56007,41320,3196,94657,94656],"class_list":{"0":"post-164041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-aubrey-plaza","9":"tag-audience","10":"tag-bowler-hat","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-chris-evans","14":"tag-coen","15":"tag-day","16":"tag-dynamic","17":"tag-ethan-coen","18":"tag-half","19":"tag-honey","20":"tag-la","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-losangeles","23":"tag-margaret-qualley","24":"tag-marty","25":"tag-movie","26":"tag-normal-thriller","27":"tag-second-film"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115067364474319480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}