Set on or about 2024 Bakersfield, California, a car accident fatality attracts the attention of private investigator Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley), who is developing the habit of losing potential clients when they suddenly start dropping dead before she can start the assignment. “Honey Don’t!” (2025) follows the days and nights of Honey and the persons of interest surrounding these deaths. It is cowriter and director Ethan Coen’s second collaboration with his wife and cowriter Tricia Cooke with their aim to make one more entry, after “Drive-Away Dolls” (2024), in their Lesbian B-Movie Trilogy. Will it whet the appetite of future moviegoers to see “Go Beavers!,” which is still in development, or will people stop at seconds?
“Honey Don’t!” is another sexy, political entry wrapped in a sun drenched neo noir. If it feels random, it is not, but like any mystery, Coen and Cooke throw a lot of pieces in the air to see if you will solve the whodunnit before Honey. There are a lot of misleading clues, desirable distractions and depressing details. While solving the mystery, the filmmakers capture a slice of American life. Honey is not like her sister, Heidi (Kristen Connolly, who resembles Uma Thurman), who has a houseful of children and another on the way with the man of the house remaining off screen and unmentioned. Her niece, Corrinne (Talia Ryder), distinguishes herself from the brood with a dash of rebelliousness whether running off with her boyfriend Mickie (Alexander Carstoiu) or styling herself differently from everyone else, but still fitting in with the times.
It must run in the family because Honey styles herself like a dame from classic Hollywood initially in dresses but soon giving way to a collection of shirts and pants and a suit on the days that she wants to be all business. While on the case to uncover the steps that led to the death of Mia Novotny (Kara Petersen), Honey loves and leaves an one-night stand for a more promising prospect, MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), a person who works at the police department whom Honey would prefer to liaise with over Detective Marty Metakawitch (Charlie Day). Qualley and Plaza are on-screen icons for playing lesbian characters so getting the two together will likely check a lot of boxes for fans, especially since their characters are not all business.
Girls are not the only ones who wanna have fun. Reverend Drew Delin (Chris Evans), the pastor at the Four Way Church, seems to have a sweet gig as a pastor who convinces the women in his congregation to submit to his sexual needs as part of “fellowship” and have the men act as his errand boys and enforcers in an international drug operation. He naturally catches Honey’s attention since the bodies falling seem to be associated with his ministry. Honey has a battle of the wits with the salivating Drew and wins easily. Evans seems to favor playing bad boys and should probably continue to indulge. As “Honey Don’t!” reveals how the sausage gets made, there are lots of MacGuffins and loose ends that get tied up mainly to show that Honey does not do this work for money. She cares about her nonpaying clients and is more effective than law enforcement. It is a choice, not a duty.
There is only one scene where Honey proactively loses her cool, and it is fun to see Honey kick some young punk’s ass. The era that the story is set gets signaled when she slaps a bumper sticker over a MAGA one. It is the most heavy-handed that “Honey Don’t!” gets, but without that moment, it is easy to miss the point of the meandering plot. Honey, who grew up and stayed in that neighborhood, made choices to live in the way that she sees fit distinct from other women in the town. Even with the overlapping childhood origin story shared with MG, including having physically abusive fathers, she decided to not take any of the traditional paths. She wants to investigate crimes, but she does not become a cop. She takes pride in living a dissolute lifestyle openly, which Elle (Lena Hall), a pianist in a local bar describes as countercultural. If you can follow the segue from Honey and MG’s backstory conversation to a random man who terrifies a missing person before the random man is identified, you should be alright, but if you cannot, prepare to get more confused and frustrated because the story will feel as if it is going in arbitrary direction when it is laid out, just not spelled out.
If “Honey Don’t!” gets slammed, it is because too much of the resolution happens off screen. When Honey solves all the crimes in a neat little bow, it becomes a head scratcher because of its relationship to an eleventh hour new missing person case that Honey is trying to solve. As the film approaches the denouement, it rushes the ending, and it is unclear where this missing person was during Honey’s confrontation with the culprit, especially since the person is a serial killer. The result is obvious, but there is not enough connective tissue to bring it to a satisfying conclusion. Implicitly, educated cases can be inferred from what is later revealed, but considering that the story is not only told from Honey’s point of view, it feels like a cheat to stop showing things from other characters’ perspectives when something bad happens to them with the exception of Hector (Jacnier), which was a diverting detour as he accidentally proved himself to be deft at defending himself.
“Honey Don’t!” is visually stunning. The opening credits reveal the names of the big stars on quotidian, decaying sights around the dusty, dying town, which feels replicated when Honey starts driving around town and really examining her environment for clues. Shot in New Mexico, Coen has not lost a step when it comes to capturing ordinary life before it explodes into violence, the calm before the storm then the logistics of a decisive takedown. The blues and browns, which costume designer Peggy Schnitzer stylishly echoes, make it more fun to watch. The look of the film is not a problem.
The Lesbian B-Movie Trilogy may hit a speed bump with “Honey Don’t!,” but it requires spoilers to get into it.
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The queer-coded villain trope has existed as long as movies have, and the killer and the kidnapper are MG, a butch lesbian, which is not innately a problem, but also is. Some straight men’s fantasy is to insert themselves into a sexual lesbian relationship, but Coen and Cooke are married with different partners. It is all consensual, not intrusive, but as an outsider looking in, it feels a little fetishized. So, on one hand, lesbians deserve to have movies where they are the heroes and villains, and guys exist, but are not pivotal and just in the way of getting to the destination, which is how the story plays out. It also feels like Coen hit the jackpot since it is through his eyes that the audience is watching it unfold, and he gets to live the straight man’s dream. We are vicariously part of this fantasy of ogling lesbians as sex objects pleasing to the male gaze.
Conventional hotness is proportional to goodness, and while no one would kick Plaza out of bed, she tones it down for “Honey Don’t!” Again, I defer to lesbian movie critics whether they feel represented and/or exploited. I enjoyed the movie and thought it was a tighter narrative than Cooke is getting credit for, but I kind of wish that Cooke would make her own movies. It makes sense why she continues to collaborate with her husband. She would not get funding or theaters to play her movies without the Coen brand name. It is not my business, and I paid to see the movie, which is rare, so any reservations that I have are outweighed by my desire for more independent films to succeed. It is an original concept even if the same stereotypical tropes plague a movie intended to serve an underserved segment of the population.
