With their indie breakthrough “Blood Simple”, their “Fargo” championship championship, their cult classic “The Big Lebowski” and their Oscar cleaner “No Country for Old Men”, the Coen brothers have deeply enrolled into film history. But as always, when such a stylish new voice pops up, there was also numerous imitators – comparable to Quentin Tarantino after “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” – Numerous imitators: films such as “Little gangsters, big coal”, “The Big White”, “The Ice Harvest”, “Small Crimes” or “Cold Blooded” tries to ride on the coat wave.
After their episoden western “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” (2018), the Coen brothers then went their separate ways-and the opposite opposite directions: While Joel Coen set up the artistically incredibly ambitious black and white-peare adaptation “Macbeth”, Ethan Coen started a writing. “Trilogy Lesbian B-Movies”. After the start with “Drive-Away Dolls”, this will now be used with the dark black humor “Honey, don't!“Continued: Very hot people have hot sex in a lukewarm noir comedy-thanks to the many stars, this is entirely entertaining, but ultimately looks like a medium-sized Coen brothers copy.
After “Drive-Away Dolls”, Margaret Qualley is again on board as the main actress in the second part of the trilogy!
The title -giving Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley) works as a private detective in Bakersfield, California. Usually she has to deal primarily with cases of infidelity, although she always recommends that her (vengeful) clientele prefer to separate yourself instead of unnecessarily investing money in evidence photos. Recently, however, more and more corpses appear in the Central Valley – and the responsible investigator Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day) obviously does not have what it takes to clarify the series of murder.
So Honey does not only plung about a hot affair with the police officer MG (Aubrey Plaza) working in the Association Chamber, but also takes up his own investigations in parallel – especially after her own niece has also disappeared without a trace. The traces quickly lead to the Four-Way Temple, a sect-like church that speakers Drew (Chris Evans) and his sermons of “active submission” not only converted into his personal sex cult, but also acts as the center of a flourishing drug trade …
Sex, sex, sex
Also in “Honey Don't!” There is a few blotes of bloody moments again, as you have always lived with from the Coen brothers-especially with a scene in a restaurant car park, where a man not only runs over twice after buying a drug, but also, stuck with his leg in the wheel arch, a whole piece. So far, so well known. On the other hand, sex has been added since “Drive-Away Dolls”-because it has never actually played a larger role in the coens before: Chris Evans (“Deadpool & Wolverine”) is extensively presenting its bare torso with a washboard belly, its revealing church orgies, including the straps and fetish linen, are rather parodistically as contemporary.
Different to Margaret QUILEY (“The Substance”) and Aubrey Plaza (“Dirty Grandpa”): Although they only roll around in the sheets for a short time, man – and in view of the target audience much more: lesbian woman – can imagine what else has to happen when Honey is in an exemplary way the dildos and anal balls in the kitchen sink. And the prelude is really hot anyway: a first date in a bar where full ambiguities are discussed about the difference between knitting and crocheting, while Honey does not lose time to become palpable under MGS Rock.
The perfect anti-Maga sticker
The best running gag in the film belongs to “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star Charlie Day: As a bullyed sheriff, it doesn't even come to mind that Honey could actually be lesbian. Again and again he asks for a date – and thinks it is a gag until the end when she replies that she is on women. In doing so, she always lies on the dashboard at hand, if she spotted a Maga sticker somewhere, which it applies to gluing. The feminist tenor extends to the motivation of the killer, the final unveiling of which is quite surprising, but at the same time it also looks very abrupt.
It is hardly surprising that the finale comes so suddenly and not very convincingly prepared: it is in a mood how Honey consistently expresses itself in dry Oneliners in a typical private detective-in-film-noir manner. But there is also “Honey Don't!” Quasi only made from tried and tested set pieces of the genre, which are simply mixed with minimal variations without the individual elements coming together – or even fitting together tonally. It almost seems as if the authors had seen one or the other Coen film too much as inspiration in preparation …
Conclusion: The second part of Ethan Coens Lesbian B-Movie trilogy, with “Go, Beavers!” Finding your conclusion consists of a lot of noir clichés, which really really come together nor narrative. “Honey, don't!” At the end of the bite to go through as a genre satire. Nevertheless, the film is consistently entertaining – and whether the cinema ticket is worthwhile because of the heated skirmish by Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza, every man and every woman can probably choose that very well.
We have “Honey Don't!” Seen at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere as a midnight demonstration.