It’s the second collaboration between Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke and reportedly the second in their “B-movie lesbian trilogy” (the planned third film is tentatively titled Go Beavers). It’s better than 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls, a randy cartoon that was so overpowering and underwhelming. This time the filmmakers play around in the film noir genre with Margaret Qualley as a wily private eye, Honey O’Donahue. The whodunnit plot is a series of disconnected threads and plotlines that don’t connect together in interesting or surprising ways. It begins with an immediate mystery: a woman, dressed right out of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, walking down an embankment to inspect an overturned auto and the body inside. Boom. I’m intrigued right away. Sadly, this might be the high point. A third of Honey Don’t involves Chris Evans playing a debauched minister selling drugs on the side and exploiting his congregation. His storyline seems to run in parallel with Honey’s investigation without really crossing in meaningful ways. It even resolves without her intervention. It’s also incredibly dull and repetitive, with Evans’ reverend being interrupted during sex multiple times for comedy, I guess. Honey Don’t exists as a winky flip on the noir genre, this time with lesbians! It doesn’t so much feel like a compelling story with colorful characters as it does a writing exercise. Qualley fares better as the straight-laced yet flirty private eye than she did as the horny caricature in Drive-Away Dolls. She’s got a self-possessed charisma and determination that works. If only the rest of the movie didn’t repeatedly let her down. It’s not offensively bad, or even as aggressively cringey as their previous collaboration, but Honey Don’t is another middling, daffy, disposable genre riff by Ethan Coen that makes me long for an eventual reunion with his brother.

Nate’s Grade: C