Honey Don't! Review: Margaret Qualley's Crime Comedy Is Full Of Misfires

There is an inherent draw to certain filmmakers, simply because they know in no uncertain terms how to make something that will catch your attention. Ethan Coen, whether he's working with his brother Joel Coen or his wife Tricia Cooke, is one of those filmmakers. There is something in each of his works far beyond a level of basic cinematic competence: a point of view, a vision that you feel in each composition, each performance, each carefully phrased line of scripting.

All of which means that Coen's latest film "Honey Don't!" is that much more disappointing and frustrating for its many misfires. It's not a terrible film, to be sure. At times it's even deeply entertaining, because Coen and Cooke clearly still have a certain sense of magic and charm in everything they do. But this dark crime comedy starring Margaret Qualley as a determined private eye is still lacking in a sense of real direction.

Margaret Qualley stars as Honey O'Donahue, a smart, tough, and determined private investigator in Bakersfield, California, who gets suspicious when a prospective client she was about to meet ends up dead in an apparent car accident. While fending off the advances of local police detective Marty (Charlie Day), and helping out her sister (Kristen Connolly) on the side, Honey seeks to find out more about the woman who'd asked her for help.

What she finds is a twisted, often sloppy series of connections and events that seem to be tied to a local church led by a charismatic and sexually adventurous preacher (Chris Evans). She also finds an attractive local cop, MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), who quickly becomes Honey's latest sexual fixation.

This setup primes the film to play with the classic private investigator setup, something Ethan Coen also did alongside his brother in his films like "Blood Simple," one of the best Coen Brothers films. Honey talks like Humphrey Bogart, dresses like Lauren Bacall, and moves through a town caught in a kind of time capsule that calls to mind Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye," only without the beach. All that plus the B-movie influence of filmmakers like Russ Meyer is more than enough to pull the audience into this film, even before all the famous faces show up around Qualley's lead performance.

So, what's the problem? All the ingredients are there, we know the tone Coen and Tricia Cooke (who co-wrote the screenplay) are setting, and we've even seen the madcap style they deployed on their previous feature "Drive-Away Dolls" (which Looper also reviewed). This should work, right? Exactly. It should, so when it doesn't, things get disjointed rather quickly.

The first act of "Honey Don't!" moves along like a freight train, layering in comedy, quirky characters, and the kind of B-movie aura that Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke are clearly going for. We know who the protagonist is, what she wants, what she's hoping to get out of her search. We know she's emotionally closed off from people around her, and that her keen analytical mind doesn't miss much. We're all set up for a crime adventure.

Then the second act arrives, and while certain threads from the first remain in place, things get tangled. New characters arrive who either make little impact or feel like they should be a bigger deal than they actually are. Moments set up to create some kind of emotional punch pass by like tumbleweeds, then disappear altogether. More side-stories muddy the 89-minute runtime, to the point that you're left wondering if you've only watched part of a movie. It would be naive to assume that none of this was intentional, and Coen and Cooke are clearly inspired by films that would've been heavily trimmed with a lot left implied in the story simply because of their exploitation roots. But that doesn't hide the cracks, and neither does the competence.

And the competence is definitely there. Margaret Qualley's not doing her best work, and can't surpass what she does in "Drive-Away Dolls," but your eye still instantly goes to her. Aubrey Plaza's a great foil for Qualley in this kind of film, Chris Evans is clearly having a blast, and Charlie Day almost steals the whole movie as a cop who just can't understand the way Honey's daily life is different from his own. The film is crisp and bright and well-shot and staged. It just ... never coalesces, and while a film doesn't need any kind of message or satisfying conclusion to work, it does need a sense of direction. By the time it's over, "Honey Don't!" has lost what little direction it had, leaving its deliberate over-the-top qualities feeling hollow, and its attempts at depth feeling shallow. There's a lot to like, but all of those things don't make a whole, and we're left wanting something more.

"Honey Don't!" hits theaters on August 22.