Directed By Ethan Coen

Starring – Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans

The Plot – A dark comedy about Honey O’Donahue (Qualley), a small-town private investigator, who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church.

Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, some strong violence, and adult language.

HONEY DON’T! – Official Trailer [HD] – Only in Theaters August 22

POSITIVES

The second film of Ethan Coen’s proposed Lesbian B-movie trilogy is a noticeable step up from last year’s “Drive Away Dolls”, even if still admittedly plagued by the indulgent excess of its own execution, making this film feel a little dejected from its audience, throughout the consistency of an effortless 84-minute runtime. For starters, Coen still knows how to pay homage to the kinds of 70’s crime noirs that he grew up idolizing, both with palpable attitude and coolness from the air of the quick-speaking characters, but also in the playful approach towards the movie’s storytelling structure, which gives the film an essence of uniqueness against anything else, contemporarily. Instead of being the third film with a non-linear structure for the third straight week, “Honey Don’t!” is actually quite linear, but its investigative mystery is driven by these singularly out of context interactions and underdeveloped links between characters that makes the first few scenes of the movie feel like scattered pieces that can only be manifested together by a faithful investment to the narrative, and while this does make it difficult to invest in the plights tied with the movie’s aforementioned conflict, I do love the idea in pulling so much more attained knowledge and definition from the movie’s moments, on account of seeing the series of individualized reveals, resulting not necessarily in ground-shaking discoveries pertaining to monumental impacts, but instead an ambitiously deviating method to its storytelling that inscribes such irreplaceable value to the integrity of the journey, with plenty of sound technical elements to appreciate along the way. On that aspect, the film’s stunning style in presentation is elicited gorgeously from Ari Wegner’s sunbaked cinematography, which with the assistance of the movie’s vintage costume designs, gives the visuals a subtly transcendent throwback quality that makes the film such a stunning siesta of a treat to interpret. Wegner’s compositions are framed intricately in ways that says so much about this singular setting than chunks of exposition deposited towards such ever capably could, with some of the seedier sides of town finding their way into the movie’s clever credits introduction and various establishing shots, and while Coen’s stylistic impulses are aimed far less prominently here than they were in his aforementioned exaggeratedly expressive predecessor, it still bares enough influence over the conscience and consistency of the movie’s visuals to feel so fleshed out with geographic distinctness, with a seemingly endless list of colorful characters requiring its ensemble to work overtime towards bringing to life. Despite the material doing neither of them favors, the work here from Margaret Qualley and Chris Evans attains a lot of magnetism in their respective screen presence, but also a faithful commitment to deliveries that makes each of them feel like living, breathing personalities in their effective approaches. At only 30-years-old, Qualley has already commanded a long list of intoxicatingly complex characters in her relatively short career, but Honey might provide her most stoic of work to date, both with unapologetically dry deliveries in rapid fire dialogue that appraise a no-nonsense kind of demeanor to such regrettable interactions with sleazy males attempting to seduce her, as well as a cunning fearlessness towards adversaries like religious zealots or MAGA nuts that Coen bounces off of, in order to unload his own organically ensued social commentary about the current state of the world. The former of that antagonistic combination is elicited from Evans, who inspires fiery intense deliveries during stage sermons, and sleaziness during sex, to outline a hypocritical man of the cloth, unloading a side to Evans that we’ve rarely seen, at least since before his Captain America days.

NEGATIVES

Despite my appreciation for so much more of what Coen was going for with this sophomore effort apart from his brother, I still found myself constantly conflicted by some of the film’s less than stellar elements, which made this a difficult movie to attach myself towards, or even feel driven by. Because this script has such a scattershot way of accessing exposition within its storytelling, often leading to a lack of contained momentum until the answers start gelling, it requires much more patience than necessary with characters who we barely get to experience before the bodies begin unceremoniously piling, conjuring a lot more questions than answers, particularly those that never receive clarity or resolution for the roles that certain characters play in the many causes and effects of the story. The characterization itself is fleshed out so surface level and depthless that it requires the ensemble to work overtime with their charisma, in order to make them investing, and the overarching narrative lacks enough intriguing mystery and punctuating comedy to make the vital interactions stick, leaving this such a flatly low scale kind of story that never finds its performing speed within the consistency of the movie’s pacing. To be fair, the film does feature a little of both, with vulgarity registering a startling spontaneity to Honey’s sedated demeanor that occasionally elicited a couple of laughs, or the overarching mystery registering a bit closer to the titular protagonist, the deeper we get into the investigation, but neither are approached with the kind of creative tenacity or consistency that makes the narrative any more engaging to its audience, and while I wasn’t exactly bored by “Honey Don’t!”, I can’t exactly say that I was gripped by it either, especially within the stacking trades of so many ineffectively resonating performances from such a stacked ensemble, who bare no semblance of impact to the movie’s benefit. While mismanagement of Talia Ryder or Charlie Day can be explained by the lack of time to what is essentially a duo of cameo performances, the lack of pursuit to the development of Aubrey Plaza is downright unforgiveable, especially in that she shares such kinetically physical bond with Honey that includes two of the raunchiest sex scenes of the year, with very little nudity to the cause. Plaza is one of these actresses who has the ability to grind the comedic material into something of her own, but here she’s not only let down by gags that don’t work well with her familiarly arid dry deliveries from the actress, but also noticeable time gaps away from the narrative’s focus, in ways that make it feel like a majority of her scenes were left on the cutting room floor, which is quite unfortunate when you consider these vulnerable moments between her and Honey are the only times we see the investigator letting her guard down. Finally, the film’s ending and big reveal go the way of most crime noirs, but they’re realized with such a tone deaf capture from Cohen that feel like comedic exploits during some of its most suspensefully grueling circumstances, leaving the palpable tension and underlining stakes stunted for such an unentertaining and abrasively rushed pay-off. Taking enough time to command emphasis inside of a physical power struggle is one thing, but undercutting the meaning inside of a character motivation is a whole other level of incompetence, and while all of the pieces line up to the mystery, it’s one of those endings that ultimately falls flatly obvious once you see how all of the pieces fit together, with a helming that I still don’t accurately interpret as if I should laugh or feel empathetic for those involved.

OVERALL
“Honey Don’t!” is a tonally incoherent and creatively juxtaposed shell of a film that even struggles to surmise entertaining consistency from the 70’s B-movie crime-noirs that it borrows so transparently from. Despite foundation-building performances from Margaret Qualley and Chris Evans, as well as a script outline that immerses the audience into the assembling of scattered pieces of an investigation, the film is an overwhelmingly hollow collision of flat humor and uncompelling mystery that constantly aims into the open air, hitting nothing close to the kind of substance that once made Ethan Cohen one-half of a dynamic duo that scintillated storytelling.

My Grade: 4.9 or D-