Honey Don't!
Focus Features | Release Date: August 22, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
46
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
24
Negative:
6

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 22, 2025
Because it thumbs its nose at the puritanical morality of contemporary mainstream cinema, Honey Don't! feels destined for cult appreciation rather than broad appeal. It’s a diverting curiosity—something to tide us over while we wait for Joel and Ethan Coen to reunite. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesGemma WilsonAug 21, 2025
Even if the weave is loose and the big final reveal takes such a hard-left turn it could cause another traffic fatality, Honey Don’t! is a bleak and breezy good time. Don’t overthink it. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiz BraunAug 19, 2025
It’s a bit of a shaggy dog story. It’s fun to look at. The cast is good. It’s instantly forgettable. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrAug 18, 2025
As Ethan Coen finds his groove as a solo director, “Honey Don’t” might not be “The Big Lebowski” or “Raising Arizona,” but it is a swing in the right direction. At this rate, if we get the pleasure of seeing a third film, it might just be a classic. Read full review
75
SlashfilmBill BriaMay 23, 2025
What the movie lacks in laughs it more than makes up for with a hip savviness that pervades every frame. Read full review
70
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerAug 19, 2025
Like a lot of Coen movies, it’s not exactly an outright spoof, but it takes place in its own little stylized pocket universe. Unlike a lot of Coen movies, Honey Don’t! doesn’t quite come together as a mystery. Read full review
70
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 23, 2025
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. Read full review
63
Washington PostTy BurrAug 21, 2025
The film is spiked with moments of gleeful violence, but Coen and Cooke understand that the primal reason we go to the movies is to look at beautiful people in nice clothes, and on that score ‘Honey Don’t!” is a rousing success. On every other score, it’s a short, shambling, surprisingly horny mess — amusing if you’re in an indulgent mood, obnoxious if you’re not. Read full review
60
The IndependentClarisse LoughreySep 4, 2025
While Honey Don’t! prods at something new and quite poignant, an idea about how survivors see themselves and that loaded word “victimhood”, it ultimately struggles to make much sense out of itself and its oddball cast. Read full review
60
Screen RantTodd GilchristAug 21, 2025
Even a joyfully queer reimagining of the genre’s classically hard-boiled protagonists fails to inject enough new energy to maintain consistent intrigue, prompting viewers to seek a resolution to the central mystery well before its comparatively short 89-minute running time elapses. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonAug 21, 2025
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. Read full review
60
The GuardianRadheyan SimonpillaiAug 21, 2025
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. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearAug 20, 2025
The way that Qualley brings her star presence and her chops to Honey O’Donoghue, however, feels unique. You’re used to seeing people in neo-noirs do their variations on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s line readings; no one has managed to fuse those icons’ respective personae into one role and make it feel completely their own. It’s truly a great sync-up of performer and part. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 23, 2025
With modest ambitions and a slender runtime, the film proves to be a sexy, amusing time – despite being fairly forgettable. Read full review
60
The TimesEd PottonMay 23, 2025
It doesn’t hang together as well as its predecessor, Drive-Away Dolls, it still offers some throwaway wickedness. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshAug 22, 2025
The character and Qualley’s performance is so beguiling that it would be a delight to watch Honey O’Donahue solve any manner of mysteries of the week, “Columbo”-style. It’s a shame, then, that the particular mystery at hand in Honey Don’t! is so convoluted and nonsensical. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireAug 22, 2025
As the film trudges toward its conclusion, it’s one frustrating scene after another like that. And by the end, you’ll realize the clever opening title sequence was probably the best part of all. Read full review
50
The New YorkerPauline KaelAug 21, 2025
Visceral though it is, “Honey Don’t!” whips up a merely decorative frenzy, concealing the well-worn tropes (hectic criminal ventures and blunders toward justice) on which it relies. Yet something of substance remains, even if it takes a long, clattery while to show itself. Read full review
50
The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaAug 21, 2025
Cooke and Coen’s winding narrative feels muted and underdeveloped, making the film’s offscreen deaths and treacherous reveals feel less like cosmic twists of fate than speed bumps that yield small chuckles and sighs. Read full review
50
LooperMatthew JacksonAug 21, 2025
It's not a terrible film, to be sure. At times it's even deeply entertaining, because Coen and Cooke clearly still have a certain sense of magic and charm in everything they do. But this dark crime comedy starring Margaret Qualley as a determined private eye is still lacking in a sense of real direction. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJustin ClarkAug 18, 2025
The film is paced in such a languid, dreamy way that it’s hard to get a grasp on how each scene connects to the larger themes or the larger mystery until fairly late. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMay 23, 2025
Despite the verve of the film, there’s no there there — just an exercise in quippy banter and witty violence that works well enough to remind you of better movies. Read full review
50
ColliderTherese LacsonMay 23, 2025
Although your mileage may vary when it comes to Honey Don't's tone, what's undeniable is that Qualley was made to play Honey. She's cool, slick, and wildly charismatic. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeMay 23, 2025
Honey Don’t! is a better movie than Drive-Away Dolls thanks to an engaging whodunit plot, but it ultimately suffers from the same issues as its predecessor: The film feels like a series of gags with nowhere to go. Read full review
42
IndieWireEsther ZuckermanMay 23, 2025
It’s a slight work that is too enamored with its own quirkiness to amount to much of anything at all. Read full review
40
iChristina NewlandSep 8, 2025
Honey Don’t! is another misfire, feeling bizarrely like an ersatz Tarantino. Given the Coens’ track record of making some of the smartest crime films in recent memory, it’s troubling how flat this one feels. I sincerely hope Ethan Coen hasn’t lost his knack. Read full review
40
The TimesTom ShoneSep 6, 2025
Coen has gone back to his happy place but this time he’s not taken the audience with him. Read full review
40
The Irish TimesTara BradySep 4, 2025
Trashy stories need plots and character development, too. Read full review
40
EmpireHelen O'HaraSep 3, 2025
There are colourful characters and cool moments to keep you entertained on the road to nowhere, but they can’t disguise the fact that this is a shaggy-dog story with no real point. Read full review
40
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsSep 1, 2025
The overriding feeling you glean from Honey Don’t! is that it’s an example of two formidable filmmakers working in a register that almost punkishly rejects the intricacy and breathtaking formal panache of their past work. Read full review
40
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah-Tai BlackAug 22, 2025
Honey Don’t! attempts another go at a mock, low-brow outing reimagined through a queer lens, but suffers irrevocably from an uncompelling mystery, patterned by a series of gags that leads nowhere. Read full review
40
TheWrapChase HutchinsonMay 23, 2025
There are plenty of silly recurring jokes and a collection of quirky characters, but it all exists to cover up just how empty the film itself is at its core. Read full review
33
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossJun 5, 2025
Earnest, pulpy fun at the movies is always a welcome sell. Still, it’s hard to settle into the easy rhythms of amusement when looking for answers not to the film’s central mysteries but to the nagging gaps in a story that seems carelessly scribbled together to accommodate a character that, although compelling enough, has very little to chew on. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerAug 21, 2025
The greatest problem is the woeful miscasting of Qualley as Honey. The script by Coen and his wife and sometimes-film editor Tricia Cooke seems to position the gun-free P.I. as a melding of two great noir conventions – the cool gumshoe and the femme fatale – and the camera loves following Qualley in high heels and wrap dresses. Yet there’s nothing much going on beyond those visuals. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonAug 21, 2025
Honey Don’t!, the neo-noir by director Ethan Coen and his wife, co-writer Tricia Cooke, is an unsatisfying mishmash of plot threads that neither intrigue nor coalesce. Read full review
25
The Daily BeastNick SchagerAug 21, 2025
Heed its title’s advice and just don’t. Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithAug 21, 2025
Mr. Coen and Ms. Cooke’s plot is such a muddle that they more or less expect us to dismiss it. The interstitial moments and incidental comedy are meant to be the chief attraction here. Minus Joel Coen, however, the jokes are thin and tired. Read full review
20
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 23, 2025
In place of classic thriller techniques and mechanisms are a beige aesthetic, limp dialogue and glib let’s-just-vibe-with-it attitude that only grow more maddening as things progress. Read full review
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