Rent Honey Don't! (2025)

Honey, Don’t Bother - Honey Don't! review by griggs

Some films are messy in a charming way. Honey Don’t is just disjointed. The premise has a spark, but what follows feels like a rough cut that somehow made it to release. Scenes clunk together with editing that often feels uneven or undercooked, characters barely get a chance to develop, and the humour is a long way from the Coens at their best.

And that may be the real problem: it’s massively missing something—Joel Coen. As such it drifts into a parody of itself. There are flashes of the brothers’ trademark absurdity, but the rhythm is off and the punchlines fall flat. What’s absent is the wit and structure that once gave their chaos its edge.

What keeps it from collapsing entirely is its brevity. At 89 minutes, it zips by before you grow restless. Still, speed isn’t the same as sharpness, and this one leaves little to savour.

Bizarre Dark Comedy Thriller - Honey Don't! review by GI

This dark comedy crime thriller is quite diverting and enjoyable even though it meanders into various subplots and refuses to really offer any real satisfactory closure to any of them. That may well have been the intention and it's resulted in the film that gathered very mixed reviews. In some ways it has a Lynchian vibe and brings to mind elements of Twin Peaks mixed with the noir yet sunshiney vibe of Chinatown (1974). Margaret Qualley plays Honey, a private investigator in a dusty small southern town. When a woman who had an appointment to see Honey for reasons unknown to her turns up dead Honey feels it necessary to investigate. Yet she investigates in vague way, easily becoming distracted by either sex with various women she encounters including a local cop played by Aubrey Plaza or other events including looking for her missing niece. None of the 'mysteries' the film shows are resolved with any sense of plot fulfilment and there are various violent and rather funny murders along the way. Chris Evans plays a sex obsessed preacher who is involved in some kind of drugs racket as an example of a plot line that falters to a stop. However, this is all presented in a style reminiscent of a classical Hollywood noir even with Honey shunning the use of modern appliances including mobile phones and she looks like a femme fatale from an old detective thriller. It's a film that sort of draws you in and I ended up chuckling with enjoyment at the whole thing. It seems to me that the whole idea here was for a thriller with a rambling almost nonsensical plot that is ultimately meaningless and meant to be so. Great performances all round and I think one of those films that will eventually gain a bit of a following.