Honey Don’t! opens in theaters August 22. This review is based on a screening at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.Ethan Coen’s desert detective comedy Honey Don’t! is a step down from what was already a disappointing departure. When older Coen brother Joel branched out from the duo’s acclaimed collaborations, it led to Shakespearean grandeur. There’s no shame in going a more playful route, as the younger Coen and co-writer Tricia Cooke did with Honey Don’t! and its predecessor, Drive-Away Dolls. But their second film in their planned “lesbian B-movie trilogy” is flimsy and insubstantial. It reads like a brisk, star-studded romp on paper: The plot concerns small-town California private eye Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley), a consummate professional summoned to investigate the suspicious roadside death of a woman who had called her not 24 hours prior. Coen and Cooke zoom out to give us the lay of the land before agonizingly connecting each dot, between the deceased’s sexually exploitative church leader, Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), Honey’s fractured family life, and her advances towards alluring policewoman MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza).Each of these subplots has its own subplots that drag Honey Don’t! further away from its mystery, including Reverend Drew’s involvement in international drug trade and Honey’s teenage niece Corrine (Talia Ryder) confiding in her about an abusive relationship. Honey occasionally follows up on leads, moving languidly between several matter-of-fact exchanges with no real emotional trajectory. The dialogue is delivered so flatly that you might struggle to differentiate the dramatic and comedic material in any given scene. Take, for instance, Honey’s many conversations with her doting, capable assistant Spider (Gabby Beans), which feel like they’re supposed to be banter between two quick-witted women, but result in awkward dead air for extended periods. The movie’s parched, dusty setting extends infinitely in establishing shots, but the characters’ interactions feel like that, too.What’s more, none of Honey’s sleuthing ever turns up useful answers. Notable discoveries and plot turns usually fall in her lap, and the story’s disparate threads end up being tied together through sheer coincidence. This might be intentional: Coen and Cooke are more concerned with the theme of feminine trauma and anger binding their storylines. However, it results in a plot-heavy film that continuously meanders on its way toward building on (or satisfying) its intrigue. There’s no single noir tradition that dictates exactly how a modern successor should operate; some of these stories focus on the mystery, while others use their underworld escapades as vehicles for charismatic characters – but that’s the main ingredient Honey Don’t! lacks. Qualley, through no fault of her own, is stuck pounding the pavement with little more than a mild scowl on her face, while Evans strains to embody a foul-mouthed douchebag with no further dimensions, much as he did in The Gray Man. The Biggest Movies Coming in 2025If Honey Don’t! has one redeeming performance, it’s that of Charlie Day as local detective Marty Metakawich. It’s a minor role made hilarious in a retrograde, tongue-in-cheek manner, since Marty keeps desperately asking Honey out on dates, no matter how many times she clarifies her sexual orientation. Unfortunately, like much of the supporting cast, Day’s role is truncated, and written first and foremost with its function in mind. His handful of scenes are all about nudging Honey’s investigation in a different direction, even though this seldom leads to interesting developments.Honey Don’t! lacks both visual pizzazz and the kind Coen-esque edge that made the brothers’ previous capers shine. Their zaniest works, like The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona, let their sprawling ensembles loose in a fun-house-mirror reflection of reality. But this one feels far too plodding to draw your attention. It also reads too overtly like the product of a hasty first draft influenced by the window dressing of other, better noirs – the PIs, the lurid crimes, the femmes fatale – without the time or effort to examine what drew audiences to those movies in the first place.Honey Don’t! is a step down from what was already a disappointing departure.“There’s no better summary of the difference between what Honey Don’t! promises and what it delivers than the mood of the crowd at its Cannes premiere. As the logos for the festival and studio came up on screen, they were met with the kind of deafening roars typically reserved for midnight cult movies. But once Honey Don’t! was underway, the excitement slowly dissipated. Punchlines were met with scattered chuckles, and the movie’s violent bloodshed – part-cartoonish, part-viscerally upsetting – yielded befuddlement. You can’t judge a movie by an audience’s reaction, but in this case, it’s at least instructive.