30-second review: So much of the plot of a simple favor is melodramatic and ironically plays off like an episode of a CW primetime soap opera. But it works. That’s thanks to director Paul Feig‘s incredible sense of tone. He knows when the movie needs to be a melodrama and when it needs to be a comedy and when it needs to be a mystery. Finding that right balance makes A Simple Favor a pure delight to watch.
However, it would be nowhere near as successful as it is if it wasn’t for an awkwardly charming lead performance by Anna Kendrick and a stellar, career-high turn from Blake Lively playing a compelling and deliciously campy character.
Where to watch A Simple Favor: Available to buy or rent on Prime Video.
Director Paul Feig has been on a roll with female-fronted broad comedies with critical and commercial hits Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy, and Ghostbuster coming one after the other. And while all of those movies share the same general tone—elevated, raunchy broad comedy with emotional elements—he takes a crack at a truly genre-bending story in the deliciously campy mystery A Simple Favor, which is based on the novel by Darcey Bell and adapted by Jessica Sharzer.
In the film, Feig is challenged with balancing a Gone Girl style mystery with a satirical suburban melodrama a la The Stepford Wives with a hint of the broad comedy he has become famous for. And while he’s mostly successful in his execution, the true stars of the movie are Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively giving the best performances of their careers.
Kendrick plays Stephanie, a widowed full-time single mother and part-time mommy blogger who is every bit the endearingly awkward, always upbeat person we’ve come to expect Kendrick to play. And while many may have become tired of her adorkable charm defined by spitfire lines delivered in stream of consciousness style, it certainly is effective here. Though she’s certainly a super mom to her son Miles (Joshua Santine), the other parents at the school don’t easily take to her over-achiever status, which is why they’re surprised when she becomes friend with full-time working mom Emily (Lively).
Emily is an enigma. She seems to have it all. A high-profile job in the city, a beautiful house in the suburbs, stunning closet—she rocks chic three-piece suits paired with equally stunning Louboutin’s throughout the film—and a devilishly handsome husband, Sean (Henry Golding). However, there’s a darkness to her hidden by her effortless attitude towards life. Still, Stephanie is roped into her life blinded with intrigue—and an afternoon martini quickly loosens her up to the idea of friendship. And that intrigue only increases when Emily goes missing.
One day, Emily asks Stephanie for the eponymous simple favor, which is looking after her son Nicky (Ian Ho) while she deals with a work crisis. With Sean in London visiting his mother, Stephanie, always eager to help out, accepts. But Emily never returns to pick up Nicky. From there, the story unfolds while Stephanie tries to figure out what happened to her recently acquired best friend. Along the way, she deals with a suspicious detective (Bashir Salahuddin, great here) convinced there’s more to the case than meets the eye, Emily’s boss Dennis (Rupert Friend), and a punk artist from Emily’s past (Linda Cardinelli).
A Simple Favor has more twists, turns, and shocks than a soap opera and Feig tackles them all with a self-aware campy flair that makes every stinging quip and ridiculous moment land. And although the movie has trouble navigating its own plot towards the end, Feig has a stellar cast to anchor it. After charming us earlier this summer in Crazy Rich Asians, Golding more than holds his own as a doting, though worn down, husband and father to Emily and Nicky. His character’s slow deterioration during the film is shown all over his face, but he still retains that movie star glow. He has a career ahead of him.
Still, it’s Anna Kendrick’s quick-fire charm and Blake Lively’s seductively sinister barbs that make A Simple Favor so incredibly fun to watch unfold. Even as the plot becomes convoluted—sometimes to excess—it’s still the kind of consciously ridiculous suburban satire that is going to please any audience it plays to. A Simple Favor is a mess in the best way possible. The only thing that would make it better is if you watched it with a gin martini with a twist of lemon in hand.
Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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