Honey Don’t! Review – ‘Never quite funny or clever enough’

Did you hear the one about the red herrings in the desert? If not, director Ethan Coen and his co-writer Tricia Cooke would like to tell you all about it over 89 minutes. But like its central character, you might end up roughly as baffled at the end as you were at the beginning.

The best reason this film has to exist is Margaret Qualley’s Honey O’Donahue, a cool private-eye character in search of a compelling case. Instead, here she’s called out to an apparent car crash in the desert by local cop Marty (Charlie Day), because the dead body might or might not be a client of hers. Then there’s the question of local sleazeball church leader/drug dealer Drew Devlin (Chris Evans) and how he might or might not be involved, and a relationship with police records officer MG (Aubrey Plaza) that might or might not go somewhere, and a string of other murders and disappearances that could possibly be connected. Or not.

All the individual pieces are perfectly entertaining, if inessential. Qualley and her vaguely 1940s style give this a pleasantly noir feel that contrasts nicely with the sun-blasted setting, while her dynamic with the cluelessly flirtatious Marty and more seductive MG are both nicely played. Evans doesn’t gel as the pervert priest, but perhaps that’s because he seems like one of the more realistic characters here – and he’s a slick huckster sex-pest with a side hustle in hard drugs.

Honey herself doesn’t end up solving much of anything here, just witnessing – or not! – a series of barely linked crimes in a dead-end town. From the stylish opening credits to the final shot, it all looks and sounds great, but it’s never quite funny or clever enough to get away with being this loosey-goosey in its approach.