Margaret Qualley in Ethan Coen Whodunit

In Honey Don’t!, the newest movie in Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s supposed lesbian B-movie trilogy, Margaret Qualley performs Honey O’Donahue, a troublesome however glamorous personal investigator in Bakersfield, California. Honey is usually within the enterprise of infidelity, taking instances involving suspicious spouses and their philandering companions. However firstly of Coen’s prankish movie, which premiered at Cannes and will likely be launched in theaters by Focus Options on Aug. 22, the sleuth finds herself drawn right into a higher-stakes thriller. The loss of life of a neighborhood girl leads Honey down a slippery path involving spiritual cults, megalomaniacal pastors and an surprising romance. 

For essentially the most half, Honey Don’t! lives in the identical thematic universe as Coen’s first solo narrative enterprise Drive-Away Dolls, which the director additionally co-wrote with Cooke. In that movie, Qualley performed a lesbian Lothario, who, after a foul break-up together with her police officer girlfriend (Beanie Feldstein), journeys throughout the nation together with her greatest buddy (a superb Geraldine Viswanathan). However their interstate journey is compromised after they understand their rental automotive incorporates items important to a nefarious scheme, and the ladies spend a lot of the leaden highway film attempting to outrun a pair of goons. Secondary to the zany caper is a love story that, disappointingly, lacks actual stakes.

Honey Don’t! is a greater film than Drive-Away Dolls due to an attractive whodunit plot, but it surely in the end suffers from the identical points as its predecessor: The movie appears like a sequence of gags with nowhere to go. 

In earlier interviews, Coen and Cooke have described their joint narrative ventures as a possibility to make movies for an “underserved market.” The pair wish to put queer characters on the heart of the sorts of brash style films they admire, which is a refreshing purpose, notably taken up by different filmmakers like Emma Seligman (Bottoms), Annapurna Sriram (F*cktoys) and Rose Glass (Love Lies Bleeding). However even the coarsest humor wants a story anchor, a narrative that retains viewers meaningfully invested. Honey Don’t! begins with somewhat of that, however finally squanders the viewer’s good will in a irritating third act that evokes extra exasperation than laughs.  

What does work on this movie are the performances and a few parts of its world-building. Qualley is a lot better suited to the position of a sardonic, hard-boiled detective click-clacking round city in her heels than she was for the uninhabited lesbian with a distracting Southern accent. Aubrey Plaza can also be well-cast as her emotionally distant love curiosity, MG Falcone, a cop on the native precinct; and Chris Evans slips simply into the position of Drew Devlin, a lecherous spiritual cult chief.

There’s additionally a gallery of sturdy supporting characters, together with Josh Pafcheck and Gabby Beans, who convey actual humor to their roles as Drew’s assistant Shuggie and Honey’s assistant Spider, respectively. And credit score should go to Peggy Schnitzer, whose wonderful costume design — from Honey’s well-tailored pants fits to Spider’s eye-catching blouses — reinforce and distinguish every character’s position on this small city’s surreal ecosystem. 

We meet Honey on the website of an terrible automotive crash, the place she joins Marty Metakawitch (Charlie Day), a murder detective for the police division, in surveying the injury. The sufferer’s identify is Mia and though the scene seems like an accident, Honey isn’t satisfied. As an alternative of attempting to help the personal investigator, Marty simply flirts with Honey. A recurring bit all through the movie, which shortly grows stale, is Marty’s refusal to just accept that Honey is a lesbian. Towards the backdrop of this investigation, Honey begins sleeping with MG (Plaza), one other officer on the native precinct, and tries to assist her teenage niece (Talia Ryder) depart an abusive relationship. 

Exterior of Honey’s private life, the main points of a cultish world emerge. Drew, a reverend for a prosperity gospel sort church, realizes that investigations into the automotive crash could lead on authorities to the depth of his scheme.

Right here’s the place Honey Don’t! turns into shaky, revealing the bounds of a movie propelled solely by antics. There are recommendations of a covert drug ring run by a French mafia group, whose pursuits are represented by a mysterious Frenchwoman (Lera Abova) who rides round Bakersfield on her Vespa. As extra lifeless our bodies pop up in Bakersfield, Honey begins to appreciate their connection to the unusual church that preys on emotionally susceptible individuals, particularly younger girls. You wish to know extra in regards to the scheme and the way Drew’s church, which the smug pastor runs poorly, suits into all of it, however Coen and Cooke solely elaborate insofar because it helps set up the following gag. 

A equally compelling thread that doesn’t get sufficient air is the connection between Honey and MG. The lesbians are an emotionally distant pair who’ve met their match in one another. There’s a mixture of steamy and candy sequences, however as with Jamie and Marian in Drive-Away Dolls, a way of incompleteness nags on the romance, particularly because it takes darker and extra twisted turns.

Qualley and Plaza do their greatest to shade their characters, and Plaza, particularly, makes loads of a a lot thinner position. Each get some sharp one-liners and there are plot gestures that attempt to deepen our sense of every character. However in the end, Honey Don’t! is the form of movie having a lot enjoyable with itself that it forgets to let audiences in on the joke.