That Empty Feeling: Review of Honey Don’t!
★★1/2
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Coen Brothers films have been a delight for decades. From the twisty turns of Blood Simple to the absurdist curves of Raising Arizona to Barton Fink to “The Dude” to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? to Buster Scruggs and everything in between, their films’ unexpected and shocking plot surprises have been one of the constant pleasures of the feature film industry.
When Joel and Ethan split up to do separate projects, it became evident that while the whole was not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts, it was certainly a distinct entity. Joel’s MacBeth was a unique take on the tragedy, casting the couple (Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand) as middle-agers taking their last desperate shot at relevance. The film was a straightforward production, shot in sparse black and white with minimal sets, and without the usual twists and shots of humor seen in Coen’s former works, which would be difficult in this particular tragedy, anyway—which was perhaps the point.
Ethan’s most recent work before Honey, Don’t! was Drive Away, Dolls, the first of what he and co-writer Tricia Cooke have termed the “lesbian B-movie trilogy”. While both films indulge in wild roller-coaster plots, rambunctious sexuality, and graphic violence (b-movie stuff), the plots and characters of the two films are unrelated, although the talented Margaret Qualley is featured in both.
Honey, Don’t! opens on a close-up of a woman’s face and slowly zooms out and reveals she is making her way down a rocky slope to an overturned car with two dead passengers inside.. The woman (later revealed to be Chere (Lera Abova)) peers into the upturned car and takes a ring from a dead passenger’s finger and then leaves.
Later, private detective Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) learns that Mia Novotny (Kara Peterson), a client she was supposed to meet the next day, died in that car crash. Honey goes to the crash site, meet with Detective Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day) who gives her the lowdown while hitting her up. When she tells him she likes girls, he laughs and says, “You always say that.” It’s almost funny the first two times we hear it. Marty thinks Mia dies in the crash, but Honey learns she was stabbed beforehand and placed in the car.
Curious about her dead client, she follows up on Mia and learns she was member of the Four-Way Temple run by the Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans). While investigating, Honey meets Officer MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza) and the two become physically involved.
Meanwhile, Hector (Jacnier), who deals drugs for Devlin, resists when a client attempts to seduce him and kills him. The Reverend Drew puts a contract out on Hector, while Chere—who is his liaison to “The French” who provide the drugs, tells him her clients are upset with him.
It turns out the Reverend Devlin manipulates the emotionally needy in his church, forcing them into sexual relationships preaching the four cornerstones of his belief duty, action, passion, and submission. It is a cult.
Along the way, Honey visits her sister Heidi (Kristin Connelly) and her brood of unruly kids. Her niece Corinne (Talia Ryder) is hanging out with a total deadbeat. Heidi tells Honey about it while simultaneously accusing her of judging them.
The bodies pile up, and Honey works to uncover the mastermind behind the carnage—except there doesn’t seem to be one. The thread finally ravels to a somewhat coherent (and grisly) solution, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of this movie.
Set in the wide dusty streets of Bakersfield, lending it a Western feel, the film also leans heavily on many of the neo-noir detective tropes of the 1940s, including the fashions. Sporting everything from smart business suits to colorful summer dresses, Honey is a cool detached detective (except when it comes to sex) full of snappy one-liners and comebacks. I kept thinking of the fast-talking hard-bitten Coen Brothers Amy Archer character from The Hudsucker Proxy—except she had infinitely more depth—and a little more moxie.
The Four-Way Church (even its name seems like a running dirty joke) and its connection to the underlying French drug-dealing organization (and its glamorous continental proxy Chere) is almost completely glossed over. Nor do we understand the Reverend Devlin as anything more than a grinning lascivious guy who hit the motherlode of sex and drugs. In a church scene, Devlin’s sermon toes a very narrow line between self-parody, satire, and the ridiculous.
The plot ping-pongs from event to event without asking for much audience involvement—which could very well be the filmmakers’ point. The snappy dialogue, the familiar tropes, and the retro fashions (including seamed nylons) play just as an important a role as the dialogue, plot, or characterizations. This is film noir with a very sketchy mystery. The sensation of watching this movie is sort of like eating M&Ms, tasty but not very nutritious.
The characters are believable, but hardly knowable. Honey is decidedly world weary, and her tendency to go retro (she still has a Rolodex) is interesting but not very relevant to the character. Marty’s loud blustering mansplaining cop character is reminiscent of the hardboiled noir of the forties, sort of like Dan Duryea in Thunder Bay: “Hey, sister, where’d you get your man training?” who refuses to acknowledge the reality right in front of his face. Again, it’s an interesting character quirk that seems to have little to do with the story.
Ethan Coen has created a pastiche of sex and violence dressed in striking fashions steeped in vintage film noir tropes. It is attractive, fashionable, sexy, bloody, and interesting, but when all is said and done, this movie is nothing more than an empty shell. There seems to be little or no meaning to it—the plot seems little more than a string of gags and puns, but maybe that’s the point.
I remember when Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction came out and a fellow student in my literary theory class wondered about its meaning. After a few beers, we decided there was no meaning, and that was Tarantino’s point, that it was just what its title suggested. Since then, critical interpretations of that movie’s thematic content of the meaninglessness of existence and nihilism has been espoused by a variety of critics—many of which could also be applied to Honey, Don’t!, but this film seems more specious and vacuous than Tarantino’s. While Pulp Fiction is pulled together, even the emptiness of Honey Don’t! seems disconnected.
Part of Ethan Coen and Trisha Cooke’s stated intent when putting together this installment of their “lesbian B-Movie trilogy” was to create a queer screwball comedy film-noir. They certainly succeed in fits and starts, but this film never quite puts it all together. Honey Don’t! is certainly funny, entertaining, pushes the envelope of screen sexuality (and taste), has fun with film noir tropes, but leaves the viewer feeling dissatisfied and empty—which could be the point.