<\/p>\n
The skies are blue, the sun unrelenting and the body count escalating in the Bakersfield, California, of \u201cHoney Don\u2019t!,\u201d where Margaret Qualley\u2019s<\/a> private investigator tries to get a handle on the nefarious goings-on in her city with a small-town feel.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the second film in Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke\u2019s<\/a> so-called \u201clesbian B-movie trilogy,\u201d and while this shaggy caper might not add up to anything significant \u2014 perhaps part of the \u201cB-movie\u201d point \u2014 it is fun and immensely watchable. That\u2019s thanks in large part to Qualley\u2019s turn as the smoothly confident Honey O\u2019Donahue, kind of a Philip Marlowe, or maybe Veronica Mars, in cherry-red lipstick, high heels and silks (inspired choices for the sweltering setting by costume designer Peggy Schnitzer).<\/p>\n Honey is meant to be strikingly \u201cother\u201d in this very downtrodden Bakersfield of eccentrics, dropouts and lost souls, where missing teeth seem to be more prevalent than pedicures. It\u2019s a carnival of very memorable, very Coen-esque misfits, like a grumpy bartender played by Don Swayze and Charlie Day\u2019s<\/a> clueless police officer Marty Metakawitch. Marty is not the only man in town who has trouble accepting that Honey will never be interested in him. You could play a drinking game with how many times she has to tell hapless men, \u201cI like girls.\u201d<\/p>\n Not only is queer literacy low in this Bakersfield, but many in town seem to have come under the influence of a church leader played by Chris Evans,<\/a> the Rev. Drew Devlin, whose high-wattage smile and proclivity for flirting have made him a local celebrity. Evans, who seems to be having fun in a weirder role, plays the Rev. Drew as a charismatic creep, an ego-driven and possibly sex-addicted influencer who is also peddling drugs and arranging hits around town. He too has a boss, or bosses, known only as \u201cthe French,\u201d which is amusingly underexplained. And he\u2019s often completely, or nearly, naked and involved in some cringey, experimental acts with his naive followers.<\/p>\n Not unlike the new \u201cThe Naked Gun,\u201d<\/a> this saga begins with a suspicious vehicular death. The deceased was an almost-client of Honey\u2019s, which sets her off poking around and looking for answers. Most of her cases are of the cheating spouse type, and this is just more interesting. Meanwhile, others start dropping dead too. Some of these deaths feel spiritually, comedically similar to the Mark Pellegrino sequence in \u201cMullholland Drive\u201d (not the only Lynchian nod).<\/a> And all signs are pointing back to the church, though Honey gets a bit distracted with a new fling in Aubrey Plaza\u2019s<\/a> lustful cop MG Falcone and some family drama with her wayward niece Corinne (Talia Ryder).<\/p>\n