Tag Archives: Tricia Cooke

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Role Reversal

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Honey Don’t!

by Hope Madden

An entertaining if slight thriller of the old school, hard-boiled detective sort, Honey Don’t! is director Ethan Coen’s follow up to 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls. The second in a lesbian B-movie trilogy, the film sees Margaret Qualley as Honey O’Donahue, a modern day (if landline and analogue) private detective in sun drenched Bakersfield, CA.

Sometime before opening credits roll, Honey got a call from one Mia Novotny (Kara Peterson), the corpse in the overturned car down a dusty canyon road. So obviously, Honey’s not actually working that case. Still, Mia had called saying she was in danger, and business is kind of slow, so what could it hurt if Honey digs in a little bit?

What she finds is an incredibly corrupt minister (Chris Evans), a missing niece (Talia Ryder), a sexy cop (Aubre Plaza), a sexier French woman on a Vespa (Lera Abova), more bodies and more leads. But no real case to solve.

Writing again with Tricia Cooke, Coen has fun recasting a lot of the romantic, tough guy mythology of the private dick and Qualley carries herself and that mythology well. And while each supporting turn is, on its own, convincing and solid, few of the characters feel like they exist in the same film.

At turns punch drunk, zany, dark, gritty, absurd, and lighthearted, Honey Don’t! causes tone change whiplash.

The cinematic sleight of hand required of any whodunnit worth its salt works on the level that it’s a surprise, but again it delivers a tonal shift that brings the film to a screeching halt.

Suddenly the slapstick comedy, delivered with panache and color and elevating the pace of much of the movie, feels not just out of place but ill conceived. The fact that the more comedic the film the more violent the imagery also feels wildly at odds with the seriousness of the final act.

Qualley has no trouble click-clacking her heels no matter the scene or tone, and both Evans and Charlie Day, as a cop with a crush on Honey, are perfect in a breezy if violent comedy about oblivious men in a world where they are unnecessary. And certain scenes feel like the polished gem of any Coen Brothers film. But Honey Don’t! can’t string enough of these together to create anything lasting.

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Coen My Way?

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Drive-Away Dolls

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Is the flattery still sincerest if you’re imitating yourself?

Because about 15 minutes into Drive-Away Dolls, the first installment of a lesbian B-movie trilogy from director/co-writer Ethan Coen and co-writer Tricia Cooke (Coen’s longtime producer/editor/wife), you can’t ignore how much this film reminds you of Coen Brothers movies.

And yes, better Coen Brothers movies.

Like The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, Barton Fink and A Serious Man, all of which get subtle and not-so-subtle nods in a twisting story of two young women and a mysterious, valuable briefcase.

Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are queer best friends in 1999 Philadelphia. Marian is sexually conservative, and the free-spirited Jamie hopes to get her friend some action while they accept a drive-away job down to Tallahassee and hit every lesbian bar they can find.

What the girls don’t know is that the car they’ve been given has two very important items in the trunk, and it isn’t long before “The Chief” (Colman Domingo) and his two hapless henchman (Joey Slotnick, C.J. Wilson) are on their tail heading South.

The cast is indeed impressive (with appearances from Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Beanie Feldstein and Matt Damon), but while the film serves up a handful of LOL moments, the vast majority of the nuttiness lands with more desperation than inspiration.

It all feels so forced, except for Viswanathan, whose earnest delivery points out the artifice in Qualley’s. The Foghorn Leghorn-y of pre-millennium lesbians, Jamie’s every line draws attention to its own zaniness. It calls to mind The Ladykillers—and that’s never the Coen movie you want to make people remember.

Much of the ensemble works magic, though. Camp is particularly, dryly memorable. But this script, and the unsteady direction, suffers from high expectations. Drive-Away Dolls is fine. It’s fun enough. It’s nutty. But if Coen and Cooke weren’t awkwardly chasing their own family history, it would have been more satisfying.