“Just direct a TV anthology” – Review: Honey Don’t!
Ethan Coen should just direct a TV anthology. If there’s anything that Honey Don’t and his prior solo effort Drive-Away Dolls elucidate, Coen’s strengths lie in funny little scenes and moments, not in a cohesive narrative film. Until he embraces the medium that suits his desires, Coen’s work will continue to suffer as a result.
The Coen Brothers made their last film together back in 2018, and since then each of them has only made solo films. The relative quality of each has led many to calling Joel the more talented of the pair. While we can’t go so far as that based on a small sample size, it seems at least that Joel is more skilled at crafting strong, film-length stories.
Honey Don’t is hard to call a bad movie. Its sleek opening credits are fun, and the script has echoes of the distinctive Coen humor. More than a few scenes are hilarious in the specific way the dialogue dances along the peculiarities of human interaction and language. Since the film is an homage to hard-boiled detective stories, the script’s stylized nature seems especially on-point.
Yet if Ethan was the humorist of the pair, he is very much not the structured one. Honey Don’t is a meandering film, just like his first solo effort, more a collection of funny scenes than a cohesive story. Certainly there is somewhat of a plot with Margaret Qualley playing a private detective hired to look into the disappearance of a few girls. The mystery seems linked to a nondenominational church run by a charismatic philanderer of a pastor (Chris Evans). Qualley’s detective also starts a romance with Aubrey Plaza‘s cop character, who is in charge of evidence.
But there is a rather lack of narrative momentum, and the obtuse nature of the storytelling frustrates more than delights. It almost feels like Ethan is trying to recapture some of the intentionally convoluted story choices of The Big Lebowski without any of the skill or technique that made that film work so well. While the performances of Evans and Charlie Day pop, Honey Don’t lurches into its third act revelations in a manner that’s wholly unsatisfying.
Honey Don’t is bright and colorful and has some notable scenes and visuals. But it seems like Ethan Coen gets random spurts of ideas, films them, and then edits half-heartedly to get to a finished product. It makes one want his brother’s steady hand involved.
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