Wish I hadn’t: first (and last) impressions of Honey Don’t!

So much of my moviegoing joy has come from what have heretofore been called “Coen Brothers films.” Readers who have followed me for a while know that Raising Arizona is my all-time favorite comedy, and I come back to others like Barton Fink, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, and A Serious Man again and again for the joy of virtuosic filmmaking and for the laughs that never get old. And even though others like No Country for Old Men, True Grit, and Miller’s Crossing strike my funnybone harder than other filmmakers’ best comedies, they’re even more compelling as literary dramas. Overall, the Coens’ filmography feels like a larger project — an investigation of the difference between “the American dream,” to which they are sympathetic, and the insidious, greed-driven, exploitative American Powers That Be.

Since the brothers turned their attention to separate projects after their fantastic anthology of flash-fiction Westerns, 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I’ve been hoping that they’ll find their way back to collaboration. Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth was an impressive showcase for great actors, captured in a dreamscape gradient of blacks like ravens and whites like blinding fog. It’s more solemn and classical in nature than anything the brothers have done together, and it rewards repeated viewings just like any good filmic Shakespeare adaptation should. But it doesn’t bring back the sharp screenwriting that I’ve loved about his partnerships with his brother Ethan. (So I cannot wait to see what he does with his upcoming Gothic mystery Jack of Spades starring Josh O’Connor, Frances McDormand, Lesley Manville, and Damian Lewis.)

But Ethan Coen? Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, we can conclude that he’s more responsible for the zanier, more anarchic energies of comedies like The Big Lebowski and my beloved Raising Arizona. But I’m now almost convinced that Joel is the balancing factor of these films, and that Ethan needs his brother’s wisdom to rein him in.

Of the almost-one-hundred films I’ve seen that were released in 2025, Drive-Away Dolls — which Ethan directed, but which he co-wrote with his wife Tricia Cooke — was the most frustrating, one of only a few films I actually regretted giving my time and attention. Its talented cast, featuring Margaret Qualley as the kind of personality that A.I. might generate if you asked for a Coen Brothers female lead, managed to milk some amusing moments from a ludicrous screenplay, but its meandering noir narrative, a kind of Lebowski Lite rooted in the lewdness of the Jackie Treenhorn chapter of that film, gave me few reasons to care about anybody and no way to suspend disbelief. Its lampooning of corrupt politicians and American a-holes was unimaginative, and its phallus-focused punchlines may have punched some laughs out of moviegoers here and there, but they seemed about as clever as fart jokes in an uninspired children’s movie.

Missing the Coens as much as I do, I brought a Honey Don’t! DVD home from the public library hopeful that I’d find reason to take issue with the flood of one- and two-star reactions from friends and favorite critics on Letterboxd. But no, the bad news just continues.

As Christy Lemire at RogerEbert.com warned, “Unless you are a Coen Brothers completist, you may want to steer clear of this second solo outing from brother Ethan (as director and co-writer).” I have one friend who disagrees with her, and who recommended this film to me claiming it meets the Coens’ high standard, but, as with my first attempt to make it through Drive-Away Girls, I nearly quit this movie at several points. I got to the end credits just so I could credibly report that it isn’t saving any surprises for the conclusion that would make me recalibrate my review. Good grief, what an unpleasant, unfunny film is Honey Don’t! — doubly frustrating because there are some talented actors involved.

In short, Honey Don’t! follows Honey O’Donohue (Qualley), a private detective who follows a trail of blood from a car crash to a sex-cult church. There, the “pastor” (Chris Evans, who seems lazy and eager to move on to something better) is so perversely and violently inclined, barking orders at lunkheaded goons, that it’s difficult to believe anybody would show up for even five minutes during one of his “church services” without smelling the corruption. Along the way, our “hero” finds time for a lot of frivolous sex with whomever tickles her fancy, until one of those ticklers, a cop (Aubrey Plaza), tickles more intensely than the others and things get what qualifies as “serious” in this world where nobody really believes much in anything.

I have no reason to object to Coen & Cooke’s decision to focus what is reportedly going to be a trilogy of paperback noir narratives cast in contemporary contexts, capers that follow lesbian lovers who contend with wide varieties of misogyny and male scumbaggery. Seems to me like this could be rich territory for subverting conventional noir narratives. Seems to me it’s a good idea to expose and satirize the toxic masculinity that is burning down American democracy in order to cover up and enable its routines of rape, pedophilia, and cruelty. But whether it’s Cooke or Coen who bears most of the blame, these films seem to have been designed on the assumption that what audiences want is a lot less literary substance than we got from the brothers’ projects; imagery that is much more lurid and crass; even more giant dildos than they threw at us in Drive-Away Dolls; and a lot more of Margaret Qualley’s ubiquitous nudity.

Honey Don’t works even harder than Drive-Away Dolls for laughs, stooping so low in its desperation that it spins variations on better lines and scenes from the Coens’ classic collaborations. (“Maybe it was Utah,” Raising Arizona’s closing punchline, gets repurposed here in a shrug-worthy fashion. And the “Pancake’s House” banging scene from Fargo gets a nasty encore here, with plus-sized women in S&M gear flaunted as the literal butts of jokes.) It’s hard to believe that Ethan ever had anything to do with the rapid-fire brilliance of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s lines in The Hudsucker Proxy, writing worthy of Preston Sturges’ comedies at their best.

The one thing in the film that almost works for me — the flirtatious chemistry between Qualley and Aubrey Plaza in their first onscreen encounter — gets spoiled by two things: first, the film forgoes any sense of romantic chemistry by having them turn things up to “11” in a lusty PDA; second, it leads to a bizarre revelation late in the film that I was not at all prepared to understand or accept.

I wish I’d trusted the reviews I got from friends and favorite critics who saw Honey Don’t! in the theater. Or maybe I just should’ve trusted the title’s imperative. Whatever the case, I’m worried now that the zanier aspects of my favorite Coen brothers films are going to seem uglier and cheaper in retrospect. I don’t want to go back to them and find myself thinking, “Welp, that’s obviously Ethan’s influence rather than Joel’s,” or, “I wonder if this scene would’ve fallen flat without Joel’s involvement.” But it’s hard to imagine that won’t be the case.

A word of counsel for my favorite cast member when it comes to future parts in Coen & Cooke joints: Aubrey . . . don't!