It’s rare that you get the chance to see exactly what both people in a directing duo bring to the table. In the case of the Coen Brothers, whose signature style could be described as farcical dark comedy, it was astonishing how apparent the difference was between Joel and Ethan Coen. The bleak and moody The Tragedy of Macbeth proved Joel Coen brought the undercurrent of darkness that penetrated all of their movies, while Ethan Coen’s wildly over-the-top Drive-Away Dolls showed that he took all their trademark whimsy with him.
But after Drive-Away Dolls earned criticism for being a tad too outrageous, it’s clear that his follow-up feature, Honey Don’t!, dials back that whimsy significantly. The result is a still absurd, but more tonally confused — and, perhaps by accident, more stylistically interesting — effort from the younger Coen.
