August 27, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Ethan Coen
Culture Representation: Taking place in Bakersfield, California, the comedy/drama film “Honey Don’t” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A private detective investigates a series of murders in Bakersfield and the disappearance of her teenage niece while getting sexually involved with a female cop from the Bakersfield Police Department.
Culture Audience: “Honey Don’t!” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and filmmaker Ethan Coen, because there’s little else that the movie has to offer that could appeal to anyone looking for a good story.
“Honey Don’t!” is a drifting and unfocused comedy/drama with an identity crisis made worse by sloppy filmmaking. This jumbled story (about a deadpan private detective investigating a series of crimes) makes one misstep after another. The jokes aren’t funny, and the crime mysteries in the story are mishandled with rushed resolutions that don’t look believable, or by abruptly dropping a crime case and acting like it doesn’t exist.
Directed by Ethan Coen (who co-wrote the “Honey Don’t!” screenplay with his wife Tricia Cooke), “Honey Don’t!” had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. “Honey Don’t” is the second movie collaboration between Coen and Cooke, who previously had the same filmmaker roles for 2024’s “Drive-Away Dolls.” And it’s also the second Coen/Cooke movie starring Margaret Qualley as a lesbian who speaks in a clipped cadence and who uses and discards lovers more than most people use and discard underwear.
It’s not unusual for filmmakers to cast the same person in a starring role for two consecutive films. However, Coen and Cooke seem to be typecasting Qualley and themselves in these collaborations. “Drive-Away Dolls” (about two lesbian friends being hunted for a briefcase that they inadvertently took in a rental car) was a flawed movie but at least had some fun elements during this madcap adventure story. There’s nothing “fun” about watching “Honey Don’t!,” unless you want to see people act like caricatures in a dull murder mystery that takes an idiotic turn and feels like an unfinished movie.
“Honey Don’t!” (which takes place in Bakersfield, California) begins by showing the scene of what appears to be a single-car accident in a ditch located in a remote desert area. (“Honey Don’t!” was primarily filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico.) A man and a woman are dead in the car. The name of the woman in the car is later revealed to be Mia Novotny (played by Kara Petersen), who was a member of cult-like church called the Four-Way Temple, which is based in Bakersfield.
A woman on a moped shows up at this car crash before anyone else can get there. It’s not revealed until the end of the movie that her named is Chère (played by Lera Abova), who has a French accent. Chère dresses like she’s watched too many Russ Meyers movies and wants to looks like a hipster femme fatale.
Chère, whose black hair is styled in a bob haircut, is wearing a cropped white shirt that shows her leopard-print bra that matches her skin-tight leopard-print pants that she wears with combat boots. Chère climbs down the ditch and looks at the dead people in the car. And then, she steals a ring from Mia and drives off in the moped.
Who is Chère? And why is she in Bakersfield, a mostly working-class city where the main industries are agriculture and energy production? Those questions are barely answered in the movie. But it’s enough to say that Chère has come from out of town and she knows the sleazy Rev. Drew Devlin (played by Chris Evans), the leader of the Four-Way Temple.
Honey O’Donahue (played by Qualley) is a private detective in Bakersfield. Her first scene in the movie shows her waking up naked in bed with a woman who’s about to find out that she’s one of Honey’s many one-night stands. When the woman smiles and compliments Honey by saying that their sexual encounter from the night before was amazing, Honey curtly says that she has to go to work and mentions that her front door self-locks on the way out.
It’s obvious that the “Honey Don’t!” filmmakers want to make Honey into a quirky gumshoe who’s a throwback to retro times (she often dresses like a 1950s pinup) and who doesn’t care that she’s out of step with modern technology. For example, there’s a scene in the movie where Honey’s sarcastic administrative assistant Spider (played by Gabby Beans) offers to replace Honey’s Rolodex with a digital database, but Honey refuses the offer. In another scene, Honey mentions that she doesn’t have and doesn’t want a cell phone.
Honey shows up at the scene of the car accident and is surprised to see Bakersfield Police Department homicide detective Marty Metkawich (played by Charlie Day) is also there. Honey wants to know what a homicide detective is doing at the scene of what appears to be an accidental traffic fatality. The only purpose of Marty in this lousy movie is to show him repeatedly asking Honey out on dates, but she always rejects him, usually by saying, “I like girls.” Marty apparently thinks he can get Honey to change her mind about being a lesbian.
Rev. Devlin is a stereotypical corrupt clergyman. He manipulates his adult female parishioners into having sex with him by saying that the sex is “the Lord’s work.” His two sex scenes in the movie also show he gives orders to his sex partners like a porn director gives orders to sex performers. (One of his sex partners holds up a hand mirror during sex with him, so he can look at himself while having sex.)
It should also come as no surprise that Rev. Devlin is also involved in drug dealing and other crimes. He has several young goons working for him, including a dimwit named Shuggie (played by Josh Pafchek) and a gullible teen named Hector (played by Jacnier), whose fates in this movie are easily predicted. Except for a badly staged showdown scene toward the end of the movie, “Honey Don’t!” has no real surprises.
Honey thinks the car crash that killed Mia is suspicious because a few days before she died, Mia had contacted Honey to ask for Honey’s help for an unnamed problem. Mia was scheduled to have a meeting with Honey on the day of the accident. The meeting was supposed to take place at a piano lounge bar, but the employees she questions there—a bartender (played by Don Swayze) and a piano player (played by Lena Hall)—have no information that can help Honey.
As Honey investigates further, she gets sexually involved with a Bakersfield Police Department officer named MG Falcone (played by Aubrey Plaza), who is supposed to be the fiery counterpoint to Honey’s emotional aloofness. Needless to say, MG is more interested than Honey in having a committed relationship. “Honey Don’t!” tries to have a tone of 1940s screwball comedy mixed with 2020s sexually explicit adult comedy, but it just comes across as forced and awkward.
For example, the first time that Honey and MG meet each other, it’s when Honey goes to look at some evidence in the evidence room that MG is overseeing. As Honey walks away, MG says about the sound that Honey’s high-heeled shoes make: “I love those click-clacking heels.” Later, when Honey and MG meet up in a bar, let’s just say that MG has her fingers do a lot of seducing as she and Honey are seated next to each other.
“Honey Don’t!” clumsily handles a subplot involving Honey’s family, which includes Honey’s older sister Heidi O’Donahue (played by Kristen Connolly), a single mother, who is overwhelmed with raising several children; Heidi’s teenage daughter Corinne (played by Talia Ryder), who has an abusive boyfriend named Mickie (played by Alexander Carstoiu); and Honey’s estranged father (played by Kale Browne), who doesn’t have a name in the movie. This deadbeat dad, who was abusive to Honey in her childhood, briefly stalks Corinne and tells Corinne, “I love you,” even though she doesn’t know who he is. Although Honey is the movie’s protagonist, not much is revealed about her personal life, except that she has a dysfunctional family and she usually breaks off her sexual relationships after the third date.
Honey is an out-and-proud lesbian (the movie shows her washing a dildo and anal beads the morning after her one-night stand), but “Honey Don’t!” doesn’t do much with Honey’s lesbian identity except put her in lesbian sex scenes and make her the object of desire of men who want to sleep with her but can’t. During a tension-filled conversation with Rev. Devlin where he tries to be seductive to her, she quips to him: “I’ll stick to my dildo. It helps me open myself, and it doesn’t have a creep attached.” This is about as amusing as the dialogue gets in the movie, but even that remark sounds like a throwaway line from a third-rate stand-up comedian.
“Honey Don’t!” goes off on another tangent when Corinne goes missing and is presumed to be kidnapped. The storyline for Rev. Devlin is one of the worst bungles for the movie because something major happens, but it is never investigated by Honey, who should have every reason to investigate. Billy Eichner has a pointless and unnecessary cameo role as a neurotic cuckold named Mr. Siegfried, who hires Honey to find evidence that his boyfriend is cheating on him.
“Honey Don’t!” is just a collection of often-horribly written scenes that seem like they were conceived as half-baked sketches, and then messily strung together to try to make a feature-length film. Qualley speaks in what can only be described as an obvious fake accent that’s a combination of a Midwestern working-class twang and a Northeastern high-society sulk. The rest of the cast members are left adrift in very shallow roles. The only thing worthwhile about “Honey Don’t!” is it can serve as a warning of what not to do when making a movie and for viewers to steer clear if they’re looking for an entertaining detective story.
Focus Features released “Honey Don’t!” in U.S. cinemas on August 22, 2025.
