Movie Review: Honey Don’t!

4 stars out of 5

I liked Drive-Away Dolls a lot more than you did, and guess what, I liked Honey Don’t! more than you did too. In fact, I liked it even more!

Hollywood historians will be able to identify the precise “tipping point” when Margaret Qualley became a national treasure: 1 minute, 13 seconds into her Criterion closet video when she stretched for a DVD on a high shelf. Absolutely exquisite. But, as repeatedly stated in these electronic pages, I’d already been a fan for a long while.

Qualley is perfectly cast as the titular private eye Honey O’Donahue. She’s tough, terse, no-nonsense, and she’s sexy and she knows it clap your hands. If this sounds like film noir to you, bingo; Ethan Coen and Tricia have taken the genre, turned it on its head, and added lots of comedy. Honey is a womanizer and always gets her girl, leaving the boys – including hapless police chief Charlie from Always Sunny and crooked womanizing minister Chris Evans – in the lurch. Ah, but work come first.

Here, work comes in the form of a woman dead in a car accident – or was it homicide? Hmm, turns out she was a congregant of Father Evans (who is a hoot). Honey better recruit the assistance of police evidence-locker attendant Aubrey Plaza. In fact, they’d better work very, very, very closely with each other. Hubba hubba.

With its bleak Bakersfield setting, Honey Don’t! works both as a solid detective story and as a Coen-Bros-lite quirky, dry comedy. Which results in a more than satisfying film – consistently entertaining and well-shot – while we patiently wait till Ethan and Joel make good on their promise to collaborate again.