Honey Don’t! — I Wish I Hadn’t

Honey Don’t!

½

Honey Don’t! sets itself up as a quirky dark comedy, but the only mystery is where the hell the plot went—and when it vanished.

Honey (Margaret Qualley) is a private detective who investigates an accident where a woman named Mia was killed. Mia was a potential client and Honey’s sleuthing into Mia’s death leads her to conclude she may have been connected to a local cult, run by religious zealot Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans). Meanwhile Honey becomes romantically involved with female officer MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza). Neither has had a serious relationship, but they bond over intimacy and shared trauma.

Honey never actually solves anything, despite being a capable detective. It’s not Honey’s fault—the writers, Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, give Honey little to work with. They seem more interested in her hard shell and attitude than in giving her anything meaningful to do.

Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley
© 2025 Focus Features

Frayed plot threads run through the film. As a narrative starts to go somewhere meaningful, another scene kicks in and the previous idea is abandoned until it’s convenient to bring it back. And that’s the plot of this film in a nutshell—scattered story fragments that get stitched together only when convenient, never forming a cohesive whole.

Qualley does a good job of bringing Honey to life, but her performance is wasted on bad writing. Evans’ charismatic, predatory preacher is possibly the most interesting character in the film. The clash between him and Honey promised cinematic gold. Hard to make that work in a pile of rubbish.

Chris Evans as Reverend Drew Devlin
© 2025 Focus Features

The rest of the cast phones it in, as if they knew this script wasn’t worth their best effort. Plaza gives us her standard mean girl attitude but isn’t able to dive deep within her character. Charlie Day as detective Marty Metakawitch becomes an annoying running gag—he can’t take a hint that Honey likes women, even when she repeatedly tells him outright.

There are other elements here that could have formed the makings of a great movie. But quirky characters, witty dialogue and out-of-the-blue “did that really just happen?” scenes aren’t enough by themselves. The script gives us several red herrings and misdirections, but without a roadmap, drives us off a cliff and leaves us stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Aubrey Plaza as MG Falcone
© 2025 Focus Features

This is a solo outing for Ethan Coen—normally co-directing with brother Joel Coen. Together, they make classic films like Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo and No Country for Old Men. They’re masters at weaving in dark, deep, meaningful themes into their films. Here, the writing glosses over the deeper threads it hints at—trauma bonds, domestic abuse, and religious exploitation.

Honey Don’t! plays like several puzzles dumped into one box—pieces that don’t fit, and a picture that will never match the cover.

If I ever meet Honey in real life, I’ll most certainly hire her for one specific thing. To find out what happened to the plot of this film. But I suspect one of the filmmakers will quash that investigation with a stark warning, “Honey, don’t.”