Another Simple Favor Review - Messy, silly and undeniably fun

Chase Gifford
Apr 30
4 min read

“Don’t let getting lonely make you reconnect with toxic people. You shouldn’t drink poison just because you’re thirsty.” - unknown

Admittedly I missed A Simple Favor during its theatrical release. It didn’t look like my kind of movie. Luckily through word of mouth and a timely blu-ray release, I decided on a rare blind buy and bought it without ever having seen it. I don’t normally do that. This would be one of those lessons you learn about not judging a book by its cover and so on because what didn’t look all that appealing ended up being a tight, intriguing, unexpectedly funny little mystery featuring two highly memorable characters played to perfection by its leads, Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick.

The emotional dance they commit to is exhilarating and endlessly entertaining. They’re constantly maneuvering from cordial and presentable to coarse and mercilessly blunt. They switch personalities as if trying on Halloween masks, switching between sweet and cute to scary and unnerving. They play nice and don’t mean it. They lash out and mean every single word. Both are complicated for their own reasons but despite any concentrated efforts to the contrary, they are far more similar than either is willing to admit.

After hearing of a sequel, I instantly thought that if this dynamic carried over into the continuation of their complicated story, half the battle was already won. And thankfully, their chemistry in the first was proved to be anything but a short-lived anomaly. At least as these characters, Kendrick and Lively are effortlessly watchable. They are all at once funny, conniving, manipulative, sincere and seasoned liars always masquerading as the most honest voices in the room.

Particularly Lively, she brilliantly hides her true intentions so well, only to allow for brief but telling moments where the mask slips if only slightly giving truth to her motivations usually included in some kind of murder plot. Kendrick’s deceit lies in her perceived naivety, making the snobs surrounding her truly think they are always one step ahead of her not knowing her true strength and overall limitations of how much she’s willing to put up with before ultimately breaking and getting what’s hers. Especially when it’s at their expense.

In the first, Stephanie was a straight-laced, internet famous super mom known for her life advice and wonderful baking skills. She was also incredibly mundane and hadn’t experienced a lot of life beyond being a single mother, a helicopter mom no less. Then entered her life, a predator, a swift and duplicitous mom who embodied her own understanding of what a mother really is. Her name is Emily. She is a force not easily tamed, rarely reasoned with and always planning and orchestrating.

We now find Stephanie on a book tour for her first book, a telling of the events that happened between her and Emily and the eventual discovery of heinous family secrets only someone like Emily could have committed. Emily is in prison, unable to scheme. At least that’s what Stephanie believes in the middle of her book reading only to look up and see the one and only walking up to her, an insidious smile stained on her devious persona just dripping off her much like the acts she perpetrated forever clung to her like a scar. Naturally, Stephanie is shocked as is everyone else in the bookstore. What could Emily possibly have to say? What grievances or wrongs is she going to scream into Stephanie’s dumbfounded ear? Only that she’s newly released and astonishingly getting married. Oh and she wants Stephanie as her maid of honor at her destination wedding in Capri, Italy. Mic dropped. Jaws dropped. New mystery begins.

Of course as always the case with Emily, anything and everything is not as it seems. Plans, schemes and dubious deals have been done, taken place and agreed upon all set to explode in quite possibly the most beautifully pristine place this side of heaven. So much of this story takes place with living postcards carrying on beyond them pushing the idea that no matter where you are, if people are there, so too exists tragedy, betrayal, death and marital manipulation. Even the most well-intentioned secrets in this story become a source of contention and flat out repugnant behavior. Whatever purity may have resided in this picturesque paradise was wrung out by these human diseases, affiliated or not.

This is often a convoluted mess that’s not always concerned with making sense of every story element it introduces. The final act in particular kind of feels like a repeat of past events, just piled on like an animated movie that thinks by simply adding new characters it’s all the justification needed for numerous sequels. (Kung-Fu Panda 2, let’s add more pandas. Despicable Me 3, give him a twin! I just always associate these kinds of sorry sequel ideas with animated features. Minions 2, more Minions!) You’ll understand if you watch this movie.

It’s far from perfect, annoying for some, irredeemable even, but for anyone who liked the first, like myself, you’ll appreciate at the very least, the ongoing give and take between Kendrick and Lively who both deliver hilariously bizarre character performances. The mystery, however implausible, still manages a certain kind of intrigue that kept me on the hook, if only to see what Emily and Stephanie might do next. The setting of Capri, Italy is otherworldly and makes for an unforgettable backdrop for such maniacal behavior, criminal characters, petty murder, repeated betrayal and an ultimate comeuppance all served with an ice cold dry martini. Luxury is rarely ever so deadly. Friendship is never supposed to be this hostile. “With friends like these…”