Posted in: Focus Features, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review | Tagged: aubrey plaza, chris evans, ethan coen, margaret qualley

Honey Don't! Review: Great Performances That Don't Make A Great Movie

There are select scenes of Honey Don't! within all of those small plots that are great, but too much is going on, and by the time the credits roll, things have been revealed, but none of it is narratively satisfying.

Honey Don't! is a breezy little black comedy, and while it doesn't overstay its welcome and has excellent performances and even individual scenes, none of it comes together in any way that makes anything meaningful.

Director: Ethan Coen
Summary: A dark comedy about Honey O'Donahue, a small-town private investigator, who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church.

Honey Don't! is one of those frustrating films because all of the pieces are there for the movie to be really good. The cast is fantastic, and they are putting in some great performances. Margaret Qualley is a captivating presence as our leading lady, Honey, and she gets pulled into all of the shenanigans while being a private investigator in a small town. That's the thing about small towns, there is always a lot more going on beneath the surface, but the reality is not as glamorous as Hollywood often tries to make it. In fact, Occam's Razor is usually the answer when it comes to the stories behind the drama in small-town America, but that's also not an interesting thing to watch play out.

Chris Evans walking around as a cult leader and the worst priest ever will probably hit a little too close to home for some. While his antics are over the top, they are also not that far off from how real cults work, and how many of these charismatic figures manage to build belief systems around themselves. Aubrey Plaza is a cop that Honey ends up in a situationship with, but the police in the area aren't very good at dealing with what's going on. And a lot is going on, which is part of the problem. There are all of these plot threads linked to the cult, to a series of murders, to a drug ring, and the way everything is being framed makes it seem like this is all going to come together in some sort of whodunnit type of thing.

The problem is that there isn't much of a connection, aside from the fact that all of these people exist in the same area, so they interact with one another. Honey Don't! has individual scenes within all of these subplots that all work very well, and if the film had taken the time to focus on one of the threads, maybe things would have worked out. Instead, it appears that Ethan Coen and Tricia Cookie were leaning into the realism of what happens in situations like this. If you get involved with organized crime and drugs, then you might get hurt or even die. That's how things play out in the real world, but it's narratively unsatisfying for a film that isn't gritty enough to try to pull off the realistic answer as the only one.

Honey Don't! clocks in at 88 minutes, and while this is usually not the case, this is one of the rare moments when more time would have been beneficial. There are so many subplots and characters with different motivations running around that nothing gets any time to develop. We know the cult isn't good because Devlin is a deviant and hypocrite, but the story doesn't take any time to tell or show us how detrimental it really is. We know a young woman has died in a car crash, and it appears things aren't what they seem. However, Honey is so busy dealing with her sister and her large family and a case involving cheating spouses that the car crash doesn't get much focus, and we learn almost nothing about the victim. Organized crime is happening right under the noses of some rather incompetent police officers; it's never given any real prominence, and it's unclear why the drug runners are acting the way they are.

There are select scenes of Honey Don't! within all of those small plots that are great, but too much is going on, and by the time the credits roll, things have been revealed, but none of it is narratively satisfying. There hasn't been any real justice for most of the people involved, and the motivations of the killer are paper-thin at best. Again, this is all very realistic about what life in small-town America is really like, but the writing, the cinematography, and everything about this film are just a bit too surreal, and the contrast doesn't work.

Honey Don't!

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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5.5/10

Honey Don't! is a breezy little black comedy, while it doesn't overstay its welcome and has excellent performances and even individual scenes, none of it comes together in any way that makes anything meaningful.

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