Honey Don’t! – No matter how much style, Honey Don’t! has, and it has a lot, none of that makes up for the hollow narrative that meanders around before realising it needs to finish at some point.

Post-Credit Scene – There is an audio sting at the end of the credits, but it’s not something you need to stay for.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress

Honey Don’t! Introduction –

Today, we are looking at a film that is confounding. Honey Don’t! has style, is filled with a strong cast, and an interesting setting. Throw in one of the Coen brothers, and this should have been absolute gold. But no matter what they threw at the screen, none of it stuck. To the point where it is almost interesting just how much it misses the mark
 
So, to set the scene, we arrive at a car crash, a lady drove over an embankment and ended up at the bottom of a canyon. Oddly, police detective Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day) from homicide is there, but why is Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley), a private investigator, on the scene? Well, for you see Mia (Kara Petersen), who is now dead, we assume, was a potential client of Honey’s, and the question remains: was she killed before she could talk?   

The Good

While there is so much that the film misses, there are also parts where it is simply fantastic. The first example of this is the setting. Set, and partially filmed in Bakersfield, you get a sense of a place that was important at one time, maybe growing up on a crossroads of transit routes that no longer exist. But now, you can just see the years of decay, as the lack of maintenance shows. There are these telling choices, like the only nice places in town are the church and the bar, which gives you grounding in the story.

This is also such a stylistic film. You can feel the intentionality for every shot in the movie. We are not stuck in an endless repeat of shot/reverse shot. There is care given to scenes, for example, when Honey visits Mia’s parents and the parents are in different rooms in the trailer, but in the same shot, while Honey has a cat eating behind her, which makes the scene feel more real. You feel this in the opening credits, pausing on a dog because it is interesting or in the way someone walks down a hallway.      

The Weird

However, all that stylisation leads to mixed results and some profoundly weird moments. This is a film where half of the cast are chewing on every bit of scenery that they can get, and then the other half are so reserved that it is painfully noticeable. Chris Evans is clearly on his post-Endgame revenge trip, where he leaps from one deplorable villain to the next. But he is quite good at the quasi cult-leader slash drug-runner slash creepy pervert. But then, Billy Eichner is playing an oddly accented, reserved character that made me wonder why you hired him only to ignore his talents.

The weirdness extends to a lot of the sequences of the film that work in isolation, even if the sum of their parts doesn’t come together in the end. A lot of these moments involve the drug trafficking sub-plot that almost feels like a different film that was sort of slapped into this one. But, no matter how they got there, they are still oddly surreal to watch play out, especially when they almost always end in death and/or calamity. For example, I don’t like bringing the washing in from the line, but even less after watching this film.    

The Bad

However, while all the building blocks for a good or even great film are there, I am sorry to say that I walked out of that theatre feeling more detached from a work of art than I think I have ever felt before. It felt like I was watching a bizarro-world Ven diagram of poor choices. The film is so edgy that it will put off people, but not so edgy that it is actually interesting. An opening premise that gets resolved in such a poor way that you almost forget what the point was. A dull murder-mystery, sitting next to a more interesting drug story that the film doesn’t want to explore properly.

The film is trying to grasp at all these commentaries about modern America, but in a confusing and unfocused manner. Indeed, I think the only thing that landed in the entire runtime of the film was “we are homeowners, we don’t take the bus”, which was fascinating, but an isolated case. There is all this more risqué content that the more the film goes on, the more you feel is there to distract you from the dithering narrative. Unfortunately, no matter how on point your stylistic choices are, if your story has no strength to it, well, it is like building your foundation on sand, or macaroni for some reason.

Conclusion  

In the end, do we recommend Honey Don’t!? Unfortunately, I can’t. Now, there were some people in my screening that did seem to be enjoying themselves, so maybe your mileage will vary. It was a truly odd experience to watch a film that felt like it was intentionally keeping you at arm’s length for almost its entire runtime. Almost the poster child for ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’. Have you watched Honey Don’t!? Let us know what you thought in the comments below. If you liked Honey Don’t!, we would recommend to you Bad Times at the El Royale as I felt it nailed the stylish film with a big-name cast but with a stronger narrative flow.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Honey Don’t!
Directed by – Ethan Coen
Written by – Ethan Coen & Tricia Cooke
Music by – Carter Burwell
Cinematography by – Ari Wegner
Edited by – Tricia Cooke & Emily Denker
Production/Distribution Companies – Focus Features, Working Title Films & Universal Pictures
Starring – Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Charlie Day, Kristen Connolly, Billy Eichner, Gabby Beans, Talia Ryder, Jacnier, Josh Pafchek, Don Swayze, Lena Hall, Lera Abova, Kale Browne, Alexander Carstoiu, Christian Antidormi, Kinna McInroe & Kara Petersen
Rating  – Australia: MA15+; Canada: 18A; United States: R