Margaret Qualley | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

It is not often that a bad movie is released that is directed or written by either Joel or Ethan Coen. Unfortunately, this is the case with the new and very strange film “Honey Don’t”. This movie has three major stars, Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Evans, who probably all took their roles only for the opportunity to work with the Coen brothers, regardless of the quality of the story or screenplay.

The erratic, haphazard story of the strangely titled Honey Don’t is about a private investigator Honey O’Donahue, played by Qualley, who investigates a series of murders in the depressing town of Bakersfield, California ( this movie was shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico). As she investigates the different murders, while visiting a series of broken-down locations and homes, even more killings occur, some of them extremely violent, where most of the killings seem to be excuses to keep the audience from dozing off, as most of this movie is very boring.

I was surprised someone as talented and funny as Aubrey Plaza took this role as a police officer, as there are several shockingly raunchy scenes with Margaret Qualley and an extremely violent scene with Qualley later in the movie. What were these two up-and-coming actors thinking, taking bad roles in a bad movie with horrific scenes like these?

Chris Evans plays a local, perverted evangelist, Reverend Drew Devlin, in a role he will likely regret later in his career. The problem with clout in Hollywood is that a famous and respected director or writer can create a bad project and still attract named actors. The worst example of this is last year’s disaster, “Megalopolis”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who spent 124 million dollars of his own money to make one of the worst movies ever produced.

This movie is categorized as a dark comedy, which is used as an excuse for some of the insane and disturbing scenes. There is nothing funny here, within a film that really has no plot and no reason for existing. I agree with the very low ratings of 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend this movie.

The message of the new movie “The Substance” starring Demi Moore, is that if you are an aging celebrity and trying to continue your career by getting plastic surgery, botox, or any number of other recommended medical solutions to slowing the aging process – far too often, these solutions fail and make the whole problem of aging worse than it would be otherwise. The best example of this is the late Micheal Jackson, who destroyed his looks by receiving way too many plastic surgeries for many years.

This story takes the ongoing problem of celebrity plastic surgeries and procedures to the ultimate level of crazy throughout this story, especially at the end, resulting in a disgusting and unnecessarily bloody, violent horror movie. I thought that the level of blood and gore was way over the top, changing the entire course of this movie into just another “seen before” massive experiment in movie makeup.

The Substance stars Demi Moore as Elizabeth Sparkle who is a fading celebrity desperate to prevent the end of her fame, due to her age. Margaret Qualley plays Sue who is the younger clone of Elizabeth who comes out of the body of Elizabeth as a result of a chemical process that requires a series of chemicals to keep the two women alive. The instructions say that they are both one person so that when one woman is alive in the world, the other woman has to remain unconscious. Predictably, things go very wrong mid way through this story, around the time when Sue becomes a huge star with a fitness TV show.

There is a great deal of nudity in this movie, making this role more risky for the career of 61-year-old Demi Moore. Time will tell if taking this role was a huge mistake or resulted in some level of a revival of her acting career.

Once again the way too high 89% Rotten Tomatoes rating for this film is wrong, with my rating only 50% mainly for the way too much blood violent and disgusting scenes throughout this movie. I do not recommend The Substance.