Honey Don't!

Because it thumbs its nose at the puritanical morality of contemporary mainstream cinema, Honey Don't! feels destined for cult appreciation rather than broad appeal. It’s a diverting curiosity—something to tide us over while we wait for Joel and Ethan Coen to reunite.

Honey Don’t! is a deliberate throwaway — a knowingly light and funny mock escapist thriller, one that’s just trying to show you a flaky good time.

The way that Qualley brings her star presence and her chops to Honey O’Donoghue, however, feels unique. You’re used to seeing people in neo-noirs do their variations on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s line readings; no one has managed to fuse those icons’ respective personae into one role and make it feel completely their own. It’s truly a great sync-up of performer and part.

It's not a terrible film, to be sure. At times it's even deeply entertaining, because Coen and Cooke clearly still have a certain sense of magic and charm in everything they do. But this dark crime comedy starring Margaret Qualley as a determined private eye is still lacking in a sense of real direction.

Honey Don’t! is another misfire, feeling bizarrely like an ersatz Tarantino. Given the Coens’ track record of making some of the smartest crime films in recent memory, it’s troubling how flat this one feels. I sincerely hope Ethan Coen hasn’t lost his knack.

There are plenty of silly recurring jokes and a collection of quirky characters, but it all exists to cover up just how empty the film itself is at its core.

In place of classic thriller techniques and mechanisms are a beige aesthetic, limp dialogue and glib let’s-just-vibe-with-it attitude that only grow more maddening as things progress.

"Honey, Don't" is the type of movie that puts its characters before the plot. And you really should be aware of that going in. It's also a neo-noir movie, which means it meanders and has a few twists and gets kind of convoluted. Not for one single second was I bored or frustrated by what I was watching. I feel like people tend to boycott movies about feminism and lesbians, and I think that's what's been happening with the general reception this movie got. By the end, you figure out 50% of the movie was red herrings. I mean, literally 50% of the plot is irrevelant. Does that make the journey less enjoyable? No, because when you watch this for the first time, you don't know those are red herrings. But even if you watch this a second time, you may still have fun. If this doesn't sound like your type of movie and you don't know whether to watch it or not: honey, don't. The Internet does not need your uber-negative reviews about a perfectly fine movie. We all know which movies starring Chris Evans you should be watching instead.

"Honey Don't!" is a deliberately knowingly light and funny mock escapist thriller, one that’s just trying to show you a flaky good time. If Ethan Cohen and his wife Tricia Cooke's intent is to make interesting B genre thriller movies, this has the funny spirit and energy of a fun noir detective thriller that's not taking itself too seriously and trusts its audience to go along for the ride. Unfortunately the multiple subplots, uneven tonal shifts and unanswered storylines make this more frustrating than funny. "Honey Don’t!" and "Drive-Away Dolls" (the first collaboration of Coen and Cooke) are tonal siblings by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, both aiming for throwaway, **** escapism, but their thematic ambitions, comedic energy, and narrative impact diverge in notable ways. The films are pitched as part of a ‘lesbian B-movie trilogy,’ but while Drive-Away Dolls is a “deliberately loose, raunchy romp” with a screwball sensibility and zippy, cartoonish filmmaking that channels the madcap energy of early Coen works, Honey Don’t! has a more straight-faced, although meandering neo-noir vibe with “small-town scuzziness” and a hangout-movie feel. Margaret Qualley stars in both films in two radically different roles. In Drive-Away Dolls, she plays Jamie, a fast-talking, sex-positive agent of chaos who energizes the action and comedy of the film. As Honey O’Donoghue in this movie, Qualley is much more contained as a sharp-dressed and slick-tongued private eye navigating a desert mystery giving the film its noirish atmosphere. When a prospective client turns up dead in a car accident, Honey O’Donahue finds the coincidence more than accidental and launches into an unsanctioned and unsupported investigation of the death. As most things happen in a small town, Honey finds that her strange coincidence connects with others in the town and seems to center around a loathsome preacher of a local cultish church. In supporting performances, Chris Evans plays a despicable and disgusting but darkly humorous cult-leader pastor who is more than he seems. Aubrey Plaza plays an innocuous, uninteresting, and awkward police officer who becomes a love interest in the film. Unlike other noir murder mysteries, Honey is a smart private investigator who really doesn’t solve anything. She moves through the town, and answers seem to fall in her lap more than her finding them. She also seems to spend more time undressed and romancing women in the movie than actually interrogating suspects. The real mystery of the movie is how we got to a conclusion as Honey meanders her way through the film. 'Honey Don’t!" seems to revel in its aimless and sluggish pacing with a plot that is equally aimless and subpar, launching into various subplots and red herrings that don't get addressed later on and never establishing the central core of a murder whodunit. A movie that feels twice as long as its runtime actually is (it’s only 90 minutes). It’s not a noir mystery nor is it overtly humorous. Sadly, it doesn’t deliver on any of its intentions. The saddest part is that sometime soon, there will be a third movie plumbing these depths. I, for one, can wait.

Es una película bizarra, con personajes excéntricos, escenas subidas de tono, es entretenida para pasar el rato.

Yeah…this one didn’t really do anything for me. I’m afraid this one missed the mark, and that’s unfortunate because although I do like Aubrey Plaza, this was another cliche typecast role for her.

A solid cast is wasted on a frustratingly cluttered and equally disconnected plot that fails to resolve any of the numerous storylines unfolding.