Honey Don’t!

Directed by Ethan Coen, Honey Don’t! follows a private investigator (Margaret Qualley’s Honey O’Donahue) as she attempts to solve a mysterious death tied to a local church (led by Chris Evans’ Reverend Drew Devlin). Filmmaker Coen, armed with his and Tricia Cooke’s screenplay, offers up a shaggy, from-from-streamlined endeavor that grows more and more interminable as it unfolds, and there’s little doubt that Coen’s haphazard approach plays an instrumental role in cementing the picture’s palpable downfall – with the growing reliance on pointless, tiresome tangents certainly ranking high on the movie’s list of disagreeable elements. It doesn’t help, either, that Honey Don’t! boasts a fairly grating turn by Qualley in the central role, which, particularly given that most of her scenes are with Aubrey Plaza’s equally irritating figure, makes it virtually impossible to work up the slightest bit of interest in or enthusiasm for Honey’s ongoing exploits. And while the film’s various subplots (sort of) come together in the end, Honey Don’t! has long-since alienated the viewer to such an extent that it’s impossible to care about any of this (and this is to say nothing of the various ill-fated and flat-out disastrous attempts at comedy).

* out of ****