Honey Don’t (2025)

Honey Don’t! (2025)

Honey O’Donahue, a private detective, is investigating a series of suspicious deaths in the small town of Bakersfield, California. These events appear to be linked to a religious community led by an egocentric reverend. Honey also wants to support her niece, who is going through a difficult time. She enlists the help of a policewoman with whom she develops a passionate relationship. There you go!

Nothing could save this film!

Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza may well strip off and sleep together, displaying great chemistry and their stunning bodies, but that’s not what makes a film! The same goes for when Chris Evans does it! But what are these fabulous actors doing here? Well, Margaret and Aubrey – I’m more used to seeing them in bad films. In fact, it seems to me they’ve never shown any real quality!

That said, Chris has certainly got us used to much better than this! He moved us in Gifted (2017), played a very genuine bloke in Cellular (2004) and was the perfect Captain America from 2011 to 2019, with a comeback in 2026. And when he plays villains, it’s often in films with a comedic slant, such as in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). But here, it doesn’t really work! The film is rubbish and Chris can’t save it! Especially as he’s the alpha male who’s out to swindle naive women and who always sees non-heterosexual women as uncontrollable nymphomaniacs. Yes, that’s where we’ve got to! Let’s add that, on top of that, he’s a priest here. Is this a way of mocking contemporary Christianity in America? If so, I can understand why he accepted this role!

A role assigned to him by our dear Ethan Coen. We’d been dreaming of seeing him team up with his brother again, but apparently the two no longer get on. Long gone are the days of their incredible films such as Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) or No Country for Old Men (2007). Burn After Reading (2008) was already signalling the end! The end of something, but what? Some people thought it was the funniest of the lot, but certainly not me.

I read this review: “A bad film by Ethan. The duo must reunite to save their legacy before it’s too late. Let’s hope it’s soon!…”

Honey Don’t! is cut from the same (despicable) cloth as the regressive Drive-Away Dolls (2024), also starring Margaret Qualley. And to think they want to make a trilogy of ‘comedic’ films. More than just one! It really ought to be called Ethan Don’t!!!

We catch our dinosaur of a director all too happy to peddle caveman humour at women’s expense. Here, we’ve got: a woman who loved women and then killed them, because her father used to beat her when she was little, and now she’s gone mad! So, thank goodness the investigator is quick to point out that she, too, was beaten by her father, but that she didn’t go bonkers. Well… if you consider that being groped by a stranger in front of everyone in a bar is a sign of sound mind, of course!!!

So, I gather that in this film, it’s a given, a general rule, that if Daddy used to beat his little girl, you’re bound to be non-heterosexual? Fear and rejection of men, mmmm, Freud, please have another look at all this!

The only real difference I’ve noticed since that dreadful Drive-Away Dolls – which already objectified women by lighting them up with a torch made of animal skins – is that we’re no longer stuck with those ‘PowerPoint-style’ visual transitions, which isn’t half bad.

In short, it was to be expected: a rubbish film with a ridiculous plot where even these excellent actors, as well as the story itself, ring false.

I’ve been lucky enough never to have been to the Cannes Film Festival, and I really don’t regret it! Especially when you realise that films like this one have a place there. Films that mean that after 20 minutes, I’m bored stiff, glancing at my watch every five minutes, if not more often! It’s even more of a shame when you’re familiar with this director’s work.

The story goes off in all directions and makes no sense at all. If you watch Fargo, you see that the pieces of the puzzle gradually fall into place, leading to an understanding of the whole. Here, it’s the opposite. In someone else’s hands – but not just anyone’s – perhaps the result would have been better.

The sequence of events isn’t coherent, and you only half-understand the ultimate motivations of certain characters. I eventually stopped seeing the point of everything else (the drug stories, the church stuff, etc.) other than to throw the viewer off the scent. What’s more, the dialogue is rather flat and full of caricatured clichés. Well… each to their own…

Yet another feature film I’d have regretted paying for had I seen it at the cinema. I can understand those who only watched half an hour of it. If this film is part of a trilogy made with a specific purpose in mind, you’ll have to guess what it is. Some people have surely already worked it out!

I loved this comment: “It makes no sense at all. I didn’t get into it at all. I wouldn’t even be able to recount the story, it’s so all over the place.”

A meaningless film, with lots of unanswered questions, and when the end credits roll, you find yourself wondering: Hang on… there’s a bit missing, isn’t there?!