Margaret Qualley is a goddamn superstar. She commands the screen for every second she’s on it in Honey Don’t!, the latest film from writer/director Ethan Coen and writer/producer Tricia Cooke, the duo that brought you the hilarious, if slight, Drive-Away Dolls. While that film, Coen’s previous “non-Brothers” outing, felt like half of a movie, here the same incomplete feeling is employed to tell a sort of “sunshine noir.” What I mean to say is that one of the defining characteristics (perhaps the defining characteristic) of film noir entries is that their scripts are overwritten and undercooked by design, which puts viewers in the shoes of the lead detective by conjuring a feeling of “oh, okay, I guess that’s what this was all about. Huh.”
Where Honey Don’t! differs from such films is that it’s very very funny. Noir flicks are quippy, and as a result, quite amusing, but rarely are they laugh-out-loud hilarious. Coen and Cooke’s script, true to the duo’s established form, is frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Qualley plays Honey O’Donahue, a private detective with a convertible, good fashion sense, and a strong independent streak. She drinks a ton (“it’s a point of pride”), she smokes, and she beds women with regularity … but calls them for a second date with less regularity. She’s quite good at what she does, and even seems to have a level of morality when it comes to what kind of case she’s willing to take: she attempts to turn away a potential client who suspects his husband is cheating on him. The way Honey sees it, if you’re sitting across from her with a request like this, you already know the answer.
When one of her potential clients doesn’t show for a meeting, instead ending up dead in an overturned car on the side of the road, Honey’s curiosity has her doing an extracurricular investigation — one that places her into a tangled web of deceit, drugs, murder, and a small town church led by the charismatic and despicable Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans). What follows is a silly, violent, horny, and convoluted trip through a few days in Honey’s life, played out like a gender-swapped, banter-laden Chandler novel(well, not entirely gender-swapped— the femme fatale is still a woman), complete with public sex acts, skulls being smashed in with irons, and a secretary who, given Honey’s independent streak, is practically begging her boss for something to do.
The film proves to be more of a genre exercise than a work of thematic depth, and at under 90 minutes it doesn’t really owe us much more than clever plotting and slick style. It’s one of those “they’re having fun, so we’re having fun” movies that Ethan Coen has more than earned his right to make. It’s clear he and Cooke are having a ball writing zippy dialogue and piling up humorous callbacks at a clip, and then letting Coen direct the hell out of it all. Honey Don’t! is a short story at feature length, and it’s a great way to burn 88 minutes of your time.
That said, I do wish the Coens would rejoin forces and give us something meatier. I love that they’re having fun separately, but this, Dolls, and The Tragedy of MacBeth ain’t no Miller’s Crossing.
And since I’m writing this from Philly and Charlie Day is a hero in these parts, I can’t leave this short review without a nod to his performance. It’s great. He’s great. I love him. He’s funny and he absolutely belongs in this sort of thing. One hopes he remains in the Coen roster for the foreseeable future (and maybe fellow Sunny gang member, Glenn Howerton, who was fantastic in the first season of Fargo, can tag along).
Directed by Ethan Coen
Written by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke
Starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Lera Abova, Gabby Beans, Jacnier
Rated R, 88 minutes
