Is this our fault Ethan? After years of making the best movies of all time with his brother, I guess Ethan Coen decided it was time to settle down with his wife Tricia Cooke, and write what appear to be his version of spicing up the marriage. While I didn’t love Drive Away Dolls, Honey Don’t shows that more time away isn’t exactly making Ethan a better filmmaker, to the chagrin of the Letterboxd legion. If I tell all those boys to back off, will you reconcile with your bro and starting working together again? I promise I’ll be good!
The movie starts with Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) investigating a car wreck in Bakersfield California. That search leads her to two things: 1 is the Four-Way Temple, lead by the, um, pleasure seeking Revered Drew Devlin (Chris Evans). The other is police lockup, where Honey catches the eye of policeman MG (Aubrey Plaza), who is immediately smitten with the click clack heel wearing private detective.
I think Ethan Coen’s brain has been broken by the concept of a lesbian, and the fact the movies historically barely acknowledge that they exist. Honey Don’t is built upon the “but a lesbian does it” comedy principle. If it was say one joke, then it’s fine, like the runner with Charlie Day’s cop. But when every joke is built around the fact that people can’t get Honey is lesbian the movie loses its point because the jokes just aren’t funny anymore. While I applaud female sexuality being represented on screen, the way it’s deployed in Honey Don’t borders on exploitation, an excuse to get naked ladies in the movie to help cover the myriad of problems inside the movie.
It’s clear after watching Honey Don’t that Joel Coen must be the plot/character mechanics brother. Honey Don’t is all over the place, and not in the good way. Storywise, the script hopes a series of random scenes somehow cohere into a plot. Hope isn’t the same as doing the work, and the big wrap up scene is so wildly out of nowhere I kept wondering if this was some sort of 5 dimensional chess Ethan Coen was playing on us all (it isn’t, even worse). You can tell the actors have no idea what type of movie they’re in either. Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza talk like 1940s ish noir characters despite this movie being set in the present day. Chris Evans is doing his Knives Out character. Charlie Day is in a studio comedy. Talia Ryder is in a teenage dramedy from 2004. And Lera Abova is in a Bond film. That means there’s no way any actor can develop any meaningful relationship with another except sorta MG and Honey, but even that doesn’t work either because of the flimsier than flimsy writing.
Ok, now I have a new red flag to look out for. When a previously incredible director gets interviewed and says he’s into making B movies now, we’re now in a new reality for that director. So have fun making your voyeur lesbian B films Ethan Coen; don’t be mad if I skip the next one though, and instead just watch Fargo or No Country again to remember what was.