Honey Don’t!

Grade: C-

I learn that Honey Don’t! (after Drive-Away Dolls last year) is the second movie in a trilogy planned by writer/director Ethan Coen. They are their own standalone projects – the plot and characters aren’t related – but each one is a pulpy crime story featuring a lesbian lead character, and the trademark Coeny dark comedy. 

I’m also finding that when famous Hollywood brother teams separate and do their own thing, one of them isn’t as successful with their output. The Farrelly brothers collaborated on Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary. When they split, Peter Farrelly directed the Academy Award Best Picture winner Green Book, while Bobby Farrelly went on to do Champions. Same for Joel and Ethan Coen (Raising Arizona, Fargo, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski). They have been working apart as of late. Joel Coen directed the Denzel Washington/Frances McDormand-led The Tragedy of Macbeth, while brother Ethan is making his way through a silly, half-baked crime trilogy.

Honey Don’t! opens with a woman, with hair like Uma Thurman’s in Pulp Fiction, making her way down a hill to the site of an upside down car crash. She takes a ring from the driver’s corpse. It’s a shallow, meaningless MacGuffin, like the watch in Pulp Fiction without as interesting or messy a journey. This woman is French, presumably as an opportunity for her to scream “Oui! Oui!” in bedroom scenes with Chris Evans. Evans plays the shady “pastor” of a small rural cult-like church. He has dealings that transpire on the side, as well as heavy physical sessions with female congregants – and not necessarily with just one at a time.

Enter Margaret Qualley as Honey O’Donahue, a private investigator who is on the case of this murder mystery nobody in the audience cares about. The plot has the labyrinthine details of the Liam Neeson-starring Marlowe from two years ago, but is too short for anything to stick. I’m not complaining about the skimpy runtime. I’m good. I don’t need anything more.

Charlie Day sporadically shows up as a mustachioed detective, who has a thing for Honey. She tells him (and us), over and over: “I like girls!” Day speaks in such a high register, as if Coen said “Don’t forget to raise the pitch of your voice, like someone in the ensemble of Guys and Dolls stepped in a bear trap while the car door slammed shut on his favorite parts!” The only subplot I liked – the one involving Billy Eichner – is brought up and quickly disregarded. It’s a shame. A movie about just that might have made a sufficient and interesting one.

I hear that the third installment in this little series is called Go Beavers! Of course it is. I’ll show up for it, to see if the third time is the charm. Thank God for Qualley, who has now established herself as an actress, and not just Andie MacDowell’s daughter. Everybody looks better when they smile, and she has a great one, not that we get to see it much here. She may steal some hearts, but in case you needed a reminder, Honey likes girls!

Grade: C-