Honey Don’t Review: A Chaotic Noir That Loses Its Way

Sometimes a film leaves you entertained, sometimes it leaves you questioning life choices. Honey Don’t falls squarely into the second category. If you value coherent storytelling, careful pacing, or even basic narrative logic, this movie will test your patience. I watched all 90 minutes of it, and by the end, I wasn’t sure whether I had seen a movie or an experimental editing exercise gone wrong.

This is my honest review of Honey Don’t… no sugarcoating, no polite padding.

What Even Is This Movie?

When we talk about movies, we usually expect a few common ingredients: plot, actors, cinematography, direction, and music. Honey Don’t throws all of that into a blender and serves up something closer to narrative gravy. Five tones, five subplots, none of which ever connect smoothly.

It reminded me of what I said in my Highest 2 Lowest review: background music or tonal shifts can ruin even a decent movie. Here, tonal chaos is the entire film. The story swerves from noir to comedy to violent thriller to sensual drama without ever settling on one identity.

What’s left is a messy patchwork where nothing feels earned.

The Cast

Let’s get one thing clear: the actors did their best. And it shows.

Margaret Qualley plays Honey O’Donahue, a private investigator who is equal parts charming, messy, and strangely detached.
Aubrey Plaza plays police officer M.G. Falcone, a psychopathic presence who hijacks the movie’s narrative halfway through.
Chris Evans shows up as Reverend Drew Devlin, a shady pastor with questionable morals and an even more questionable arc.

All three are charismatic and magnetic on screen, but the script gives them little to work with. Their paths barely intersect, and when they do, the moments are rushed and forgotten just as quickly.

Honestly, I felt bad for them. You could see Evans trying to add depth, Plaza leaning into her unhinged persona, and Qualley carrying scenes with her usual spark. But no amount of acting prowess can salvage a broken story.

The Plot — Or the Lack of One

Let me piece this together.

Chris Evans plays a reverend who lures vulnerable women while also moonlighting as a drug supplier for the French mafia. That is a good setup, could have fueled an entire film. But he’s cut out abruptly, with no real connection to what comes next.

Margaret Qualley’s Honey is a PI investigating suspicious deaths that somehow circle back to Evans’ church. But instead of unraveling that mystery, the narrative veers sideways.

Suddenly, Aubrey Plaza’s M.G. Falcone takes over the film as a cop with deeply questionable methods. She kidnaps Honey’s niece, while simultaneously staging elaborate murders. Her motive? A twisted ideology that women who tolerate abusive men deserve worse.

The kicker? Her storyline barely needs the church angle at all. Whether or not Evans’ character existed, Falcone and Honey would still collide. Which makes Evans’ whole arc including the mafia subplot feel like filler.

And the niece’s kidnapping? It contradicts Falcone’s eaxrlier “clean” kill staged as a car accident. Why go from sleek execution to sloppy hostage-taking of the PI you are hooking up with? None of it tracks.

The film tries to play these narrative dead ends off as edgy or mysterious, but really, they’re just messy.

A Tonal Free-for-All

This movie feels like three different scripts stapled together. The pacing is erratic, with long stretches of stylized but dull conversations followed by bursts of random violence. Then, out of nowhere, steamy sequences appear as if someone decided the movie needed “spice” mid-edit.

Honestly, it could have worked better as a 40-minute pilot for a neo-noir anthology show. There are interesting fragments here the detective archetype, the psychotic cop, the corrupt reverend. But in feature-length form, the lack of coherence drags everything down.

The Director’s Experiment Gone Wrong

Honey Don’t is directed by Ethan Coen (yes, one half of the Coen Brothers), and that fact alone raised expectations. Coen tries to combine Wes Anderson’s stylized quirkiness with Quentin Tarantino’s violent absurdism.

The problem? Both Anderson and Tarantino, no matter how unconventional their films get, they always tell coherent stories. Their characters have purpose, their madness has structure.

Here, the ambition overshoots the execution. Instead of clever genre-bending, we get tonal whiplash and narrative dead ends.

Final Thoughts

When the credits rolled, my biggest question wasn’t about the story, it was about the title. Honey Don’t. Was it a warning to women not to fall for manipulative men? Was it a jab at Honey herself for flirting with danger one too many times? Or was it a sly message from the filmmakers to the audience: “Honey, don’t watch this”?

Whatever the intention, the title feels like the sharpest joke in the movie.

Rating:

Yep 1.5 stars, lowest one from us on the Watchlist Diaries, yet. Half a star each for Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Evans… they tried. The rest is just an unwatchable chaos.

Stream It or Skip It?

Skip it. Unless you’re a die-hard fan of one of the lead actors and want to see them experiment with roles, this movie isn’t worth your time. I can’t even call it a guilty pleasure, the guilty part is watching it in the first place.

That’s my take on Honey Don’t. Did you manage to sit through it? Do you think Ethan Coen’s solo attempt worked in any way, or was it just an ambitious misfire? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear if you agree, disagree, or found something redeeming I completely missed.

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