Honey Don't! | Film Review

 

Private Investigator Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley) investigates a series of deaths tied to a mysterious church in her small town.

I loved 'Drive-Away Dolls', the first film in this unofficial trilogy, so I was looking forward to seeing this one. Both premises were quite vague, but because I loved that one so much, I was interested to see if this one would be similar.

Unfortunately, this one wasn't nearly as good.

While the characters were really fun and interesting on the surface, the more you watch and listen to them, the less they sound like real people. The dialogue is off, and their actions are just odd.

I liked the setting, and the basic idea of the film. Small-town mysteries always have a lot of potential, and when executed well, can be really great, so it's disappointing that this one falls flat.

The story takes a while to get interesting because we don't care about these people, let alone the people who die. This isn't a world we're interested in so we don't care what happens within it.

And then there's the fact that a lot of the film has nothing to do with the mystery. In fact, every single scene felt unimportant to the main mystery. If the characters don't care about the deaths, why should we?

It wasn't as funny as it was clearly trying to be. None of the humour really landed for me.

And unfortunately, neither did any of the performances. Chris Evans' character and performance was the best part of the film for me, which is saying a lot because in any other movie it probably wouldn't have been a particularly good performance either. 

With 30 minutes of the film left, the story didn't feel like it had gone anywhere or had anywhere left to go.

So overall, this isn't one I'd recommend. If you're in the mood for a fun, gay Coen/Qualley movie, watch Drive-Away Dolls, because that really deserves so much more love!

4/10