Critics say ‘Honey, Don’t!’ is ‘light and funny’ with a standout performance by Margaret Qualley, even if it ‘might not add up to anything significant’

Ethan Coen returns to the director’s chair with Honey, Don’t!, cowritten with longtime collaborator and wife Tricia Cooke. The film stars Margaret Qualley as Honey O’Donoghue, a private detective navigating a quirky and dangerous world filled with cops, cults, and chaos in Bakersfield, Calif.

At the center of the buzz is Qualley’s performance, which critics agree is the film’s strongest asset. “You can’t overstate how much her performance glides the movie over an abundance of rough patches and past dead-end detours,” David Fear of Rolling Stone writes. “The way that Qualley brings her star presence and her chops to Honey O’Donoghue feels unique.”

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Variety’s Owen Gleiberman frames the film as a breezy genre romp: “Like last year’s Drive-Away Dolls, to which it’s a companion piece, Honey Don’t! is a deliberate throwaway — a knowingly light and funny mock escapist thriller, one that’s just trying to show you a flaky good time.”

Lindsey Baher of the Associated Press summarizing the experience as “gory, unapologetically sexual, quippy and dark.” She adds, “While this shaggy caper might not add up to anything significant — perhaps part of the ‘B-movie’ point — it is fun and immensely watchable.”

The film, which has a “rotten” rating of 48 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, has a strong supporting cast that includes Chris Evans as a church leader, Charlie Day as an inept police officer, and Aubrey Plaza as a sardonic cop. Still, the focus of the story is Qualley, whose sultry Honey carries the film.

Radheyan Simonpillai of The Guardian sums it: “Both Drive-Away Dolls and Honey, Don’t! can feel like they’re cruising, leisurely if not mischievously, mostly taking in the scenery populated with deliciously kooky characters, who run into or away from each other while bodies pile up in spurts of hilariously nasty violence, without necessarily adding up to much.” But, like other critics, Simonpillai highlights Qualley’s magnetic performance: “It’s hard to stay mad at a movie for refusing to add things up, or resolve its mysteries in any traditionally satisfying ways, when getting lost with Qualley can be such a pleasure.”

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