In 2024, married filmmakers Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke posed a cheeky question with their screwball caper “Drive-Away Dolls” — what if crime comedies could be way less masculine, and way more sapphic? Working in a style and tone that could only be described as “late '90s Tarantino rip-off,” the two essentially “queered” that particular subgenre with a wild, wacky and sexually uninhibited sensibility.

That film was the kickoff of their lesbian B-movie trilogy starring Margaret Qualley, which Coen directs, Cooke edits and they both write. The second installment, the Bakersfield, California-set neo-noir “Honey Don’t!,” continues this project, which is both personal for the pair (Cooke is a lesbian; they have an open marriage), and an opportunity to just have a little fun, riffing on tropes and stereotypes while playing in the world of the stylish whodunit, ribbing films like “Pulp Fiction” for a laugh (there are a couple of overt nods to Tarantino’s 1995 classic).

In “Honey Don’t!” Coen and Cooke set up quite the world of intrigue in dusty, sun-drenched Bakersfield, where Honey O’Donahue (Qualley) is the town’s retro-styled, very gay private investigator. With her red-painted lips, hypnotic swagger and seductively low voice, Honey draws in suitors of all stripes and sensibilities despite her professed preference. “I like girls,” she keeps reminding the cheerily persistent homicide detective Marty Metakawitch (Charlie Day).

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.

Coen and Cooke’s script attempts to play sleight of hand, using elaborate misdirection to lead the audience down one very obvious path, before pulling the rug out to reveal a bizarre and random twist that isn’t satisfying in the least (a review that Honey’s never received from one of her lovers).

When a potential client ends up quite literally dead in a ditch after a deadly car wreck, Honey starts to poke around. She ends up investigating a creepy mega-church led by a charismatic and corrupt preacher, Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans, having too much fun), while also managing a situation with her rebellious niece, Corinne (Talia Ryder) and her troublesome boyfriend (Alexander Carstoiu), and striking up a new relationship with MG (Aubrey Plaza), a gruff local cop. She’s also got a new client to placate, Mr. Siegfried (Billy Eichner). Somehow all these disparate threads do weave together, but the seams show and it’s messy work.

Frequently, Coen and Cooke put the emphasis on sustained suspense sequences that are ancillary at best to the central storyline. There’s a section of several extremely violent scenes concerning the mishaps of Devlin’s drug dealers and henchmen that go nowhere, plot-wise, and ultimately don’t serve the purpose of establishing the mood and vibe either. For a film that’s under 90 minutes, there’s a lot of unnecessary flab that distracts from the central mystery without propelling the story forward.

Much like “Drive-Away Dolls,” the sex in “Honey Don’t!” is frank, frequent and funny — or attempting to be. The sex scenes feel both like a porn parody and also somehow lack eroticism. There’s nothing titillating about them, despite how energetically they’re performed by the actors.

Maybe “Honey Don’t!” needed more vibes and less plot, because the best part of the film is a montage where Honey drives her vintage convertible around Bakersfield, searching for her niece, soundtracked to a terrific new Jack Antonoff song, featuring his wife Qualley on vocals.

It’s the best of what this film has to offer: the character, the setting, Qualley’s performance as a kind of latter-day lesbian Philip Marlowe from Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye.” Remember though, that “The Long Goodbye” was mostly about mood anyway, Marlowe buying cat food, his quirky neighbors, the plot unfolding almost effortlessly underneath him. In “Honey Don’t!” the plot feels so effortful and forced, a great expenditure of narrative energy that just sort of evaporates.

“Go, Beavers!” is slated to be the third film in Cooke and Coen’s trilogy. Here’s hoping the third time’s the charm for what has so far been a pair of films that’s more wildly uneven than wildly wanton.

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‘HONEY DON’T!’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, some strong violence, and language)

Running time: 1:28

How to watch: In theaters Aug. 22

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