dynamic

“Honey Don’t!” is a smutty desert mystery in which the detective, Honey O’Donohue (Margaret Qualley), never gets around to solving the central crime. She’s too busy seducing women and swatting down randy men. I’d call the opening murder a red herring except it’s really more like a fish left to cook in the blinding Bakersfield sun.

The second film co-written by Ethan Coen and his collaborator and wife Tricia Cooke (the first was 2024’s “Drive-Away Dolls”), it’s less preoccupied by the challenge of who’s responsible for that corpse than by its own overarching question: Why not? Why not let Margaret Qualley prove she has the electricity to power an audience through any plot? Why not pivot from “The Big Lebowski” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” to an announced trilogy of tatty lesbian exploitation pictures? Why not, when a couple has earned the industry clout to shoot the script they want with the cast they want, make exactly the movie they want, even if this pulpy B-picture isn’t very good? Who’s going to tell them, honey don’t?

To be clear, there’s enough to like in “Honey Don’t!” to get you through its 89-minute running time. I’d watch Qualley stride around barking at people for twice as long and her supporting cast, which includes Aubrey Plaza as Honey’s latest lover and Chris Evans as an oily pastor, is delivering at top level, i.e., Coen-worthy. (Newer talent Josh Pafchek pockets his scenes as a moronic Australian brute.) The script has several zingers that are so good you want to applaud right in your seat, particularly an insult Honey slings at her estranged daddy (Kale Browne). Even the extended intro credits have a witty energy that makes you forgive that they’re tap dancing to pad the length.

Still, as with the sillier “Dolls,” which also starred Qualley as a hot-to-trot queer queen, the film is so shaggy that it feels longer than it is. I finished both movies double-checking my watch in astonishment that they really were under an hour and a half.

Qualley’s Honey is a headstrong investigator who is so independent, she refuses to let her secretary (Gabby Beans) make her a cup of coffee. Frankly, she’s not that impressive as a private dick. Honey is only passingly curious why a client died before their first meeting and so predominately distracted by tangental side quests — her troubled teen niece (Talia Ryder), her dalliances with Plaza’s husky lady cop — that the resolution doesn’t involve much brilliant deduction. We know from the first scene that Honey needs to keep a close eye on a mysterious stranger named Cher (Lera Abova). Ultimately, the French femme fatale catches her attention for other reasons.

Across town, the corrupt Reverend Drew (Evans) is swaying his parishioners to sleep with him in the name of godly submission. “I want to see your bosoms jouncing during fellowship,” he commands a member of his flock. The preacher is one of the biggest sinners in Bakersfield, not merely because both he and Honey may as well be using the phone book as a checklist of conquests. A normal thriller would frame their dynamic as cat versus mouse. Here, it’s more like plague and vaccine. Honey is immune to his sales pitches for heterosexuality and holy salvation.

Honey is a brazenly preposterous creation: a 21st century woman who insists on using a Rolodex, something that was headed toward extinction before Qualley was even born. Striding through brush in seamed stockings and high heels — and changing wardrobe multiple times a day just because she can — she’s the only character who never breaks a sweat (except in the bedroom).

Qualley keeps her cool from head to toe: eyebrows stern, line deliveries cucumber-crisp. Like a brassy classic dame, she says exactly what she means. When the local homicide officer, Marty (Charlie Day), makes a pass at her, she bluntly replies, “I like girls.” The guy doesn’t listen — he just keeps pestering her — which makes their dynamic play like some sort of clunky runner about how men are dense.

Marty’s pursuit is that. But Honey’s retort is also how the real-life Cooke shot Coen down the first time her future husband asked her out on a date. More than anything, it’s evidence that “Honey Don’t!” primarily exists as the couple’s own affectionate in-joke. “Tricia’s queer and sweet and I’m straight and stupid,” Coen said last year in an interview with the Associated Press. Both describe their three-decades-plus marriage as “nontraditional.” Both also insist that they’re making these pulp flicks as a unit and don’t care who gets credit for what, claiming that Coen is cited as the director of “Honey Don’t!” simply because he’s the one in the DGA.

Coen is, of course, half of another twosome with his brother Joel that also enjoys defying labels. Their filmography zigzags between thrillers and comedies, lean exercises and awards heavyweights, never making the same movie twice. It’s as though their guiding compass is to stay ahead of audience expectations. The pair has been on a creative break since 2018’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and it’s been tempting to use their separate projects as an opportunity to examine who each sibling is as an individual. If you watched Joel Coen’s black-and-white “The Tragedy of Macbeth” in a double feature with “Honey Don’t!” you’d leave convinced that the elder Joel was the stylist and the younger Ethan the wit — that Joel wears a monocle and Ethan a grease-painted John Waters mustache.

But they might just be tricking us again. It’s just as valid to say the brains behind those two movies are William Shakespeare and Tricia Cooke, especially the latter as she seems to have had the stronger hand in shaping the two sexy Qualley capers we’ve seen thus far. (The third already has a title: “Go Beavers.”)

As sloppy as it is, there’s no denying that “Honey Don’t!” works as a noir with a pleasant, peppery flavor. Yet, there’s a snap missing in its rhythm, a sense that it doesn’t know when and how its gags should hit. When a playboy (Christian Antidormi) swaggers up to a bar and orders a shot of cinnamon schnapps, the line clangs like it landed better on the page. A few scenes later, a low-level drug dealer goes home to his Bolivian grandmother (Gloria Sandoval) who is such a caricature — bowler hat, lap full of dried chili peppers — that you suspect the character was designed to get more of a laugh. I did giggle when Honey visited her sister, a worn-out hausfrau named Heidi (Kristen Connolly), and kids kept popping out of the corners of her home one after another like rabbits from a hat.

The majority of the townsfolk that Honey encounters are such incurious mouth-breathers that the humor can feel hostile. The film’s worldview is that most people are, as Coen describes himself, straight and stupid. That’s worked out well enough for him. He’s won four Oscars and, more importantly, the ability to do whatever he darned well pleases.

Tommy Fury spoke about co-parenting his daughter Bambi with Molly-Mae Hague in the second episode of his new BBC Three series Tommy: The Good. The Bad. The Fury

Former Love Island star Tommy Fury has revealed that he has a different approach to parenting compared to Molly-Mae Hague. He’s said that their daughter Bambi “knows she can’t get away” with anything when she’s with her mother.

The boxer, 26, spoke about being a parent in his reality TV show Tommy: The Good. The Bad. The Fury, which launched on BBC Three earlier tonight. In the second episode, filmed towards the end of last year following his split from Molly-Mae, now 26, he opened up about co-parenting whilst living separately from the content creator and Bambi, now two.

Tommy, who has since reconciled with Molly-Mae, said that it had proved “tricky” to co-parent since she moved out of the home they shared with their daughter. He then teased that Molly-Mae offered more discipline as a parent than him.

Amid scenes of Bambi staying at Tommy’s house with him, he said on the show: “Obviously it’s tricky because Molly’s at her house and I’m here at the minute. When Bambi’s here, it’s all me, and when she’s there, it’s all her, so it is tricky.”

Tommy continued by saying: “I’m wrapped around her little finger ten times so I’ll literally do anything for her. But at least with Molly she knows she can’t get away with it But with me, she definitely can. She can get away with murder.”

The release of the episode comes after Molly-Mae has spoken about challenges as a parent in recent months, with her suggesting recently that Bambi is “testing boundaries” at the moment. She was seen in tears in one vlog, released last month.

She told fans at the time: “I feel like I need to keep my camera running all day so you guys like actually just see … it’s like every single thing is a huge problem. Like [Bambi is] screams and can’t even get like socks and shoes on.”

Molly-Mae also addressed the suggestion that she’s “out of touch,” after complaining about struggling with parenting lately, in the same vlog. She said: “I don’t care who tells me I’m out of touch with reality or like all this stuff that’s going on on TikTok at the minute. […] I don’t care like I’m not gonna not talk about it.”

In the second episode of his show, Tommy also spoke about hoping to live with Molly-Mae and Bambi again in the future. He said: “You just dream of one day, y’know, them coming back and the house to be filled with joy again. Y’know, I hope that one day everything can sort itself out and we can live here as a family again.”

And in the first episode, Tommy spoke about them having moved out as he once again dismissed previous speculation that cheating had led to him splitting up from Molly-Mae. He said: “The reason for our end in the relationship was alcohol.” He said that he had been “drinking a lot” whilst unable to train after injuring one of his hands.

Tommy later said that he didn’t expect Molly-Mae to leave him. He went on to say that he was “drunk” when his fiancée and Bambi left their home, adding: “So I don’t actually remember it that well, which was even more upsetting.”

Tommy: The Good. The Bad. The Fury continues on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer next Tuesday from 9pm. The first six episodes are available through BBC iPlayer now.

If you are struggling with alcohol abuse or addiction, advice and support can be found at alcoholchange.org.uk.

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