Few American directors have come close to putting together the body of work that Joel and Ethan Coen amassed over 34 years from their first feature (one of the all-time great debut films) Blood Simple in 1984 through to 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. As a duo, the Coens have done it all, putting together a widely varied body of work where each film is always, unmistakably, a Coen Brothers movie. When the two went their separate ways following the Ballad of Buster Scruggs, audiences and critics couldn’t help but try and read into what each brother brought to the table in their collaboration. Their first two solo efforts seemingly made this quite easy. Joel’s The Tragedy of Macbeth and Ethan’s Drive Away Dolls co-written and directed (DGA credit be damned) with his wife Tricia Cooke suggested that Joel is the brooding visual stylist preoccupied with the cold indifference (if not outright hostility) of the universe while Ethan is the silly one with a knack for colourful characters and humorous dialogue steeped in Americana.
Ethan Coen’s latest film Honey Don’t, is a dark comedy neo-noir following private investigator Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) as bodies pile up in connection with the illicit activities of a church/sex-cult operated by the sleazy Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans). The film is the second in a planned “Lesbian B-Movie Trilogy” (to be clear, it is a thematic trilogy, the films are not narratively related), co-written and directed by Ethan’s wife Tricia Cooke. Honey Don’t pours water on efforts to speculate on what the two brothers brought to the table individually throughout their 30+ year partnership. At times quite grim and tense, it is far more reminiscent of dark comedies like Fargo or Burn After Reading than the free-wheeling and goofy Drive Away Dolls, films in which idiots pursue schemes above their pay grade, bodies pile up as things go awry, and more often than not those pursuing the criminals are unable to get ahead of things until it is too late.
There’s definitely stuff to like in Honey Don’t. The performances are good throughout, headlined by a confident Margaret Qualley as the titular Honey O’Donahue, with standout supporting performances from Chris Evans as a preacher dabbling in the drug trade but primarily pre-occupied with having sex with his parishioners, and Aubrey Plaza as O’Donahue’s emotionally distant love interest. Perhaps the films’ greatest asset is the tension and dread that ramp up throughout as increasingly grim and tragic events start to unfold which may or may not be related to O’Donahue’s investigation. It’s also somewhat novel for its contemporary setting, the Coens so rarely set their films in the present day (the last Coens’ film that wasn’t a period piece was 2008’s Burn After Reading) and while its commentary on the present moment is not exactly revelatory in its insightfulness, the Coen’s are so locked into establishing a sense of setting in their films that taking on the present moment provides an exciting opportunity for new ground in a vast body of work.
Unfortunately, the film does fall short of the lofty expectations one has for a new movie made by one of the Coen Brothers. While there are some good bits and funny scenes, some of the humor falls flat, and it never reaches the heights of Fargo or Burn After Reading, films that are able to not just offset the grimness of their stories through humour but effortlessly mine said grimness so that the grimmer it is, the funnier it gets. The film looks a lot better than its predecessor Drive Away Dolls (both shot by the overall great Ari Wegner) though it still feels quite flat visually when compared to the radical visual style expected from the Coen Brothers.
It’s always difficult to avoid grading the lesser works of great filmmakers on an unfair curve - the question of whether Honey Don’t is a good movie, or whether it is worth seeing, should be based upon how it stacks up to the average film, not how it stacks up to some of the best films ever made. Still it's hard to avoid the comparisons, especially when this film is very much in the lineage of Coens’ classics. Overall, I think there’s enough I enjoyed in this one to say it is a good film. However, if you’re a long time fan of the Coen Brothers, go in expecting a lower tier effort, from filmmakers who nonetheless are incapable of making entirely uninteresting films.
Rating: 3/5
Written by: Benji Wiseman