Honey Don’t! (dir. Ethan Coen)

by Jack Martin | Sep 4, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 89 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 5 September 2025

WHO’S IN HONEY DON’T?

Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Charlie Day, Billy Eichner, Kristen Connolly, Gabby Beans, Talia Ryder, Jacnier, Don Swayze, Josh Pafchek, Lena Hall, Lera Abova, Kale Browne, Alexander Carstoiu, Christian Antidormi, Kinna McInroe

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Ethan Coen (director, writer, producer), Tricia Cooke (writer, producer, editor), Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Robert Graf (producers), Carter Burwell (composer), Ari Wegner (cinematographer), Emily Denker (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A detective (Qualley) investigates a mysterious murder…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON HONEY DON’T?

Whatever may have happened between Joel and Ethan Coen that caused the filmmaker brothers to split and start making their own individual material, it’s clear which of these siblings is practically useless without the other. While Joel is off making high-calibre pictures like The Tragedy of Macbeth, Ethan has decided on the less conventional route of creating, along with his wife and fellow filmmaker Tricia Cooke, a trilogy of B-movies featuring female protagonists who happen to be explicitly gay. Not a bad direction to go down, and in theory it’s cool to see this kind of representation on the screen, but now that we’re two movies into said trilogy – first there was Drive-Away Dolls, which wasn’t very good, and now there’s Honey Don’t!, which is worse – one can plainly see that the spark that Ethan may have once had with his brother alongside him is nowhere to be found.

That is especially the case with Honey Don’t!, a giant apathetic shrug of a movie that doesn’t even seem interested in recapturing that idiosyncratic Coen energy, let alone actually delivering something that will capture a modicum of the viewer’s interest.

Taking place in Bakersfield, California, the film follows Honey O’Donahue (Margeret Qualley), a private investigator looking into the sudden death of a young woman linked to a cultish new-age church, where its reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans) preys on his vulnerable congregation and also deals drugs for various traffickers. Honey, who like the leads in Drive-Away Dolls is a proud lesbian, also engages in a fling with police officer MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), and… well, that’s pretty much it.

Being light in plot is one thing, but to feel so undercooked that it hasn’t even been removed from its refrigerated packaging is something else entirely. Coen and Cooke’s script barely gets underneath the skin of its central mystery, which never seems as though it ever truly gets going or at the very least raises the level of intrigue when certain things come to light. Instead, their narrative is padded with frustrating non-sequiturs that make a large majority of the plot feel relatively pointless, thinly-drawn characters who are lucky if they get more than one defining personality trait, and sudden bursts of violence and graphic sex which, while impressive in the effects department, carry little weight because you neither care nor are invested in the people that it’s happening to. There’s simply no depth to this movie, which even the lighter entries by the Coen brothers still had to some degree as there was a much more fascinating world happening around their fairly incidental plot, an attribute that Ethan cannot seem to replicate on his own.

Even as a director, the singular Coen struggles to keep his eye on the ball. His movie is filled with baffling filmmaking choices that either add nothing to the overall experience or distract with how wildly out-of-place they feel, including opening credits that rely on poorly timed freeze-frames as the names are shown on various buildings from the perspective of a moving car, and inconsistent editing – partially courtesy of Cooke – that suddenly moves from one scene to the next without so much as a simple establishing shot. Outside of that, it’s a very blandly directed film, with Ari Wegner’s sometimes interesting cinematography doing little to elevate the autopilot-mode level of filmmaking that Coen brings here, which even for a film that comes in at just under ninety minutes feels closer to two hours of monotonous inconsequentiality.

His actors also suffer from being given direction that makes it seem as though even the filmmaker doesn’t know what to do with them, notably Chris Evans whose tones and inflictions are all off for the kind of sleazy character he’s portraying, one that he’s played much better under more assured direction in films like Knives Out. Sometimes, Coen will get his actors to do the most confusing things that don’t even work in the heightened reality he’s created, such as a rather racy scene in a bar between Qualley and Plaza where it’s not immediately established what they’re doing to each other (though it is extremely obvious in hindsight, not to mention quite lewd and potentially prosecutorial given their environment), which makes it more awkward to watch as it initially just looks like the performers are acting uncomfortably for no clear reason. The only actor who seems to actually understand their assignment is Charlie Day, who shows up a few times as a cop who clearly has a thing for the very gay Honey, but in his limited scenes he gets perhaps the biggest laughs in the entire film (which even then are no louder than mild chuckles) because his is the most consistent character and performance that falls more in line with what the script and direction seems to be going for.

While Drive-Away Dolls also didn’t work, it at least tried to replicate that zany Coen tone and even stood out more in terms of visuals and ideas, whereas Honey Don’t! lazily slaps a whole bunch of idiosyncrasy together with very little of it sticking. It’s a colossal failure that’s dull, unentertaining, and makes you wish that Ethan would patch things up with his brother so they can reunite and start actually making good movies together again – though given the reported title of Ethan’s third and final film in this trilogy, Go Beavers, you’re morbidly curious to see how that one turns out.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Honey Don’t! is a pitiful shell of filmmaker Ethan Coen’s former glory with frustratingly undercooked plotting and lazy filmmaking that strands his talented cast and crew on flimsy material that makes Drive-Away Dolls look like a true Coen brothers masterpiece.