Cinema has given us some iconic duos over the years; Newman and Redford, Bogart and Bacall, Burton and Taylor, but duos are rare in the directing sphere.
The Coen Brothers spring to mind when people think of directing duos, but in recent times, the brothers have gone their separate ways.
The Minnesota geniuses who gave us movies like Fargo, No Country For Old Men and Inside Llewyn Davis haven’t worked together since 2018’s The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs.
Brothers Ethan and Joel haven’t given an official reason for the split, but whatever the cause for the split, we are praying they kiss and make up sooner rather than later.
Honey Don’t! is the second in Joel’s planned lesbian B-movie trilogy (the first instalment, 2024’s Drive Away Dolls, has already become a cult hit in queer circles but didn’t really capture the public’s imagination) and one can only hope the third movie is when Joel figures out how to actually make a good movie.
The common link in Joel Coen’s B-movie trilogy is Margaret Qualley as the star; each time, she is playing a different character involved on one side of the law and the film mixes elements of Coens-style comedy and crime dramas.
This time around, Qualley plays a private detective in California named Honey O’Donahue who is investigating a string of mysterious deaths in the area and tries to find the common link between them.
So far, so Coens; here’s where the film goes off the rails.
In a good Coens Brother movie, the mystery is usually incidental (ala Lebowski or A Serious Man), but this time the central mystery is a weak springboard for the rest of the plot to bounce off.
In The Big Lebowski it doesn’t matter that the central mystery isn’t all that important and doesn’t really get resolved; you are so drawn into the world of the movie and the characters that you are left hooked and wondering what happens next.
With this movie, you can’t wait for it to be over.
Something feels missing and off with this film, and it’s pretty obvious what it is; it’s lacking the other Coen brother behind the camera and writing the script.
There is a small sample size, but it might be the case that Joel was the true genius of the brothers and Ethan was just the funnyman.
Joel’s sole directorial effort thus far, 2021’s The Tragedy Of Macbeth, was a striking and bold reimagining of the Shakespeare play and boasts a towering Denzel Washington performance.
Joel has begun shooting a new drama called Jack Of Spades with Josh O’Connor in the lead role; expect that movie sometime in 2026 and for O’Connor to continue his red-hot streak.
Ethan’s directorial efforts are two shaggy dog stories that feel more like a bad episode of Columbo.
It makes sense that Ethan Coen would stay within the crime comedy well (after all, it has worked brilliantly for him before), but there is a clear sign that when he’s working without his brother, some of the magic is lost.
Per reports, this film isn’t solely an Ethan solo project; his wife, Tricia Cooke, is a co-writer and co-producer on the film and by all accounts, is a co-director on the film too in the classic Coens style.
Cooke also co-wrote and co-produced Drive Away Dolls, and you can somewhat forgive that film’s flaws because it was their first time making a film together.
Drive-Away Dolls wasn’t a classic, but you can at least excuse the sloppiness because it was Ethan Coen’s first time working without his brother, and there’s a sense they were learning the ropes and finding their rhythm.
There is no excuse with Honey Don’t!
In watching this film, there is no indication that this is the same guy involved with some of the best American films of the last 40 years.
For a film with a 90-minute run time it feels like four episodes of a TV show smashed together or a normal episode of Columbo; there is nothing here to indicate the plot, such as it is, justifies being made into a full-length movie.
The last 15 minutes, in particular, feel rushed and sloppy in a way that is totally at odds with the cleanliness and airtight manner in which the Coens make their movies.
Despite the major, glaring problems behind the camera, we can’t find fault with the cast; Qualley is a fantastic fit for the off-kilter world of the movie, and the film does have fun with the idea of a young lesbian private eye being tasked with solving a mystery.
Charlie Day, of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia fame, makes the most of his scenes as an airheaded detective who works with Qualley, and he’s just as dense here as he is on Always Sunny.
Fans of the show will appreciate that it’s like seeing Charlie Kelly thrown into the middle of a cop drama, and is rocking a fantastic moustache to boot.
Between this film and Materialists, Chris Evans is also showing that he was absolutely correct to walk from the Marvel movies; the man is a born movie star and having him work with big directors like a Coen or Celine Song is exactly what he should be doing.
Evans is the highlight of the movie as a charismatic leader of a church that is involved with shady dealings in the community.
Evans gets his movie star moments and delivers them well; he is a natural at the rat-a-tat Coens dialogue, and there is an almost Albert Brooks energy to his performance in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from the former Captain America.
Aubrey Plaza is also well-cast as Qualley’s love interest, a police officer who gets drawn into the mystery but is holding a mysterious secret of her own.
The scenes between Qualley and Plaza are the film tipping its hat to the more Roger Corman-y elements of the script; for fans of 70s genre cinema, Qualley and Plaza do a spirited job of capturing its scuzzy energy and deliver more than what was written on the page.
To reiterate, we’re not terribly keen on this film, but that isn’t the fault of the cast.
In our reviews, we are aware that going to the cinema is a pretty expensive activity for people these days, and we mention if a film is worth seeing in a cinema or if you can wait for streaming; you can wait for Netflix with this one.
As much as it’s important to champion original films by auteurs, there are limits; if a final year film student turned this in as a screenplay, the person grading it would say, “come back with a finished script.”
It seems there is only room for one creative pair of brothers at any one time; the trade-off for the Gallagher brothers touring again is that the Coen brothers are working apart now.
Rock music’s gain is most certainly cinema’s loss.