“Honey, don't!” is proof that Ethan Coen needs his brother The second film in the trilogy that began with Drive-Away Dolls in 2024 has been released in theaters

Ethan Coen has parted ways with his brother Joel who, in turn, has worked on personal projects, including the upcoming Jack of Spades starring Frances McDormand and Josh O’Connor. For the younger half of the No Country for Old Men duo, the time has come to present the second chapter of the queer trilogy opened in 2024 with Drive-Away Dolls. The Honey, don’t! premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it was given a special midnight screening.

The common thread for Ethan is the sexual orientation of his protagonists, once again led by Margaret Qualley, now stuck in this trilogy of deliberately B-movie titles that is taking neither the American filmmaker (nor his actress) anywhere, for a project perhaps more ambitious than the results of each single film suggest. Although Drive-Away Dolls was disparaged more than it deserved—a small film with the oddities of the early Coens and a willingness to take risks that can be amusing precisely for its quirky spirit—the real burden (also at the box office) comes with this second chapter, which tries to imitate the first’s intuitions but is impoverished in terms of eccentricity.

Deconstructing the crime genre, the work begins with a murder, only to quickly lose interest in it, instead trying to intrigue the audience with what happens around the protagonist and the characters revolving around her. There is no real intent in the film to logically pursue the investigation, which is more of an excuse to set the story in motion. But whereas in Drive-Away Dolls that same sense of disorientation was balanced by a playful, carefree tone, in Honey, don’t! it is smothered by the film’s constant understatement.

The quirky traits of the individual characters—from Audrey Plaza’s tough MG Falcone to Chris Evans’s sex-obsessed reverend—do not compensate for the confusion that seems to plague not only the protagonist’s investigation but the entire work itself, which drifts into a story that remains arbitrary. Inconsequential to the narrative of the film, even worse for the audience’s entertainment, and unfortunately unsatisfying in view of completing the trilogy Ethan Coen set out to finish.

A result that keeps fueling calls for the brothers’ return as a filmmaking duo, even if it must be acknowledged that Joel Coen with his The Tragedy of Macbeth managed to earn recognition, also translated into Oscar nominations in 2022, including one for Denzel Washington’s performance in the lead role. The separated duo has taken completely different paths. For Ethan, it’s a kind of return to the past: with his recent films he seems to be chasing a youth that slips through his fingers, briefly held but quickly gone like the dusty highways on which his protagonists speed.

Meanwhile, it is ambition that drives Joel, leading him to engage with William Shakespeare in his version of Macbeth, building a mystical and intangible universe shrouded in the fog of black and white, far more dramatic and fateful than his brother’s stories. And it remains to be seen what he will deliver with Jack of Spades, of which nothing is known beyond the recent summer shoot in the Scottish countryside. One thing is certain: before any possible artistic reconciliation, the queer trilogy must be concluded. Even if the first instinct, as many have already shouted, would be to say: «Ethan, don’t!»