Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke are back with another lesbian capper in Honey Don’t alongside Margaret Qualley again but unlike their first outing in Drive Away Dolls Honey Don’t, despite sporting an excellent ensemble misses the mark and makes this 90 minute caper an exhaustive outing that has not a lot to say, says too much without anything impactful and wastes some comedic moments from people who should be doing this work more often. Overall, there is something in Honey Don’t but whatever it is isn’t strong enough or fleshed out enough to become a solid overall product that is worth the time or effort invested into finding out *what* that promise is.
The movie focuses on private detective Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) as can’t take a hint detective Marty Metakawitch (Charlie Day) sees her at the sight of a traffic accident that leaves a prospective client dead in a ditch off the side of the road. Slowly, but surely, Honey realizes as more deaths keep occurring something sinister is happening and she cannot take this on alone, and refuses to work with Marty so she aligns herself with MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza) who works the evidence room to try and piece everything together, but struggles to make it make sense. At the centre of all of this is Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans) who is running a cult like church for finding ones self and as things slowly start to unfold and get revealed a little more of the tangled puzzle is answered by even as we reach the end of the movie nothing is fully pieced together.
What works for Honey Don’t is the fact that Ethan and Tricia can provide punchy chewy dialogue for their cast to eat their hearts out with and the cast, mostly, knows what to do with it and how to make this work. Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans are great in their roles, even if neither of them get to be fleshed out enough to really leave an everlasting mark, Plaza gets more than Evans but by the time it gets to a point of intrigue you find yourself clocked out. While Charlie Day being the ‘lovable’ creep only works in the setting of Philadelphia. Margaret Qualley who returns for her second outing with the couple is the tour de force here, keeping the entire project on its feet and giving the audience something to actually care about and be interested in, but that can only unfortunately go so far. The writing is messy and inconclusive with too many homages and turns to be its own identity and bring something together that evokes a singlet of interest by the audience, so her performance is what makes the movie tolerable.
Ethan and Tricia know how to write, and Ethan knows how to direct, and there was something profoundly interesting and engaging with Drive Away Dolls – but whatever half baked concept Honey Don’t ended up being presented as fell apart that is only saved by a strong performance and some truly absurdist bits of comedy from Chris Evans. As a fan of Drive Away Dolls it pains me that Honey Don’t isn’t better, but truly there has not been a longer feeling 88 minutes this year and that is never a good thing.
