Honey Don't! (2025) *

Directed by:  Ethan Coen

Starring:  Margaret Qualley, Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Billy Eichner

This is Ethan Coen's second film since splitting with brother Joel Coen.  The first was the unbearable Drive Away Dolls and Honey Don't! is nearly as unwatchable.  Whatever your personal or professional issue may be, please repair it with Joel and get back to making movies like Fargo and No Country for Old Men.  Movies like Honey Don't! beg to be forgotten.  It took some research for me to recall the name of the movie Drive Away Dolls, let alone what it was about.  Both movies starred Margaret Qualley as its lesbian protagonist, and both are equally unremarkable.

Qualley plays Honey, a Bakersfield private eye who is drawn into a murderous conspiracy involving (possibly) a corrupt local preacher (Evans) and his henchmen who are hell-bent on knocking off those who disrupt or threaten their criminal empire.  Honey wisecracks her way through the proceedings and falls for a local cop (Plaza), who may be more involved with this than we believe, or even care about.  I stopped caring early on.  Fortunately, Honey Don't! is only roughly 85 minutes long, although that was probably 75 minutes too long.

Chris Evans at least provides some comic relief as the hypocritical preacher who finds he's in way over his head.  He has found some interesting work post-Captain America, even though the early summer's Materialists was better than this movie, it wasn't anything memorable either. Whatever the opposite of memorable is, Honey Don't! is that.