A Simple Favor is a patently deranged film.
The 2018 mystery caper is, on paper, about a mummy vlogger (Anna Kendrick) investigating the disappearance of her enigmatic frenemy (Blake Lively). But it also brims with non-sequiturs and loose ends; line readings so stilted they feel beamed in from an alternate dimension where movies have never existed.
There are creepy twins and con artists, bible camps and blackmail, insurance schemes and arson plots — all ramping up to a twist-a-minute finale so tortuous that it renders any attempt at a spoiler instantly moot.
It is borderline unwatchable and entirely brilliant: a glorious exaltation of melodrama and maximalism that — sorry to get cheesy about it — cements cinema’s ultimate power of artifice.
When we first meet Emily Nelson — Lively’s fiendish femme fatale — she is a PR dominatrix permanently bedecked in corporate fetish-wear: sleeveless cuffs and leather gloves, pinstripes and gentleman’s canes. By film’s end, she’s traded her smoking jackets for jumpsuits, relegated to the prison yard for the foreseeable future.
Costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus is returning to the franchise with her trademark style. (Supplied: Amazon Prime)
Now, she re-emerges in Another Simple Favor — a sequel every bit as bizarro as its original.
Helmed once again by Bridesmaids and Spy director Paul Feig, Another Simple Favor reunites our sparring leads in their sleepy Connecticut town — home to little more than rows of suburban manors and a disproportionate amount of felonies.
Kendrick’s Stephanie Smothers is still vlogging, though she’s transitioned from cupcake recipes to cracking true-crime mysteries. She’s also penned a tabloid tell-all about her experience with Emily, fizzing her way through a book tour that’s far less salacious than its contents.
That’s until a pair of stud-encrusted Louboutins gatecrashes an unassuming event at a bookstore. Emily’s back — either with a vengeance or a new-found verve — and she’s here with one request. Will Stephanie be the maid of honour at her wedding?
“I love these characters so much, and it just felt like there was a chance to do something new with them,” director Paul Feig told Mamamia. (Supplied: Amazon Prime )
Given the film’s utter detachment from anything approaching reason, this favour is less than simple. It’s a hotel wedding in Capri, Emily’s betrothed is a mafia boss called Dante (Michele Morrone) and there is a non-zero chance that everyone might die.
Of course, Stephanie agrees. Never let logic get in the way of a lurid narrative!
Before long, we’re whisked away in a gaudy private jet to the Italian coastline — where the red wine splashes like blood and the cliffs tower vertiginously over frothy waters.
Because this is a mob wedding, we’re hardly minutes into the proceedings before the brutality emerges: hulking consiglieres barely concealing their rifles and screaming matches over lunch.
“I know how fortunate I am to know and work with each of these incredible people and artists,” Lively wrote on Instagram. (Supplied: Amazon Prime)
If the first film was already preposterous, then Another Simple Favor — improbably — pushes the dial even further.
Expansionism is its only guiding principle. Everything is bigger, louder, camper, more.
A coterie of new caricatures joins the fray: Stephanie’s fabulously loud-mouthed literary agent (Alex Newell); a blundering FBI operative (Taylor Ortega); Emily’s suspicious aunt Linda (Allison Janney); mother-in-law Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci), a Machiavellian mob wife permanently bedecked in giant crucifixes.
But what makes this franchise so enjoyable hasn’t changed: the dishy chemistry between its two leads, both leveraging their public personas to cartoonish extents.
Kendrick peels back her garrulous charisma — just see her gasbagging performances in Pitch Perfect and Twilight — to reveal a sinister core. Meanwhile, Lively recalls her Gossip Girl breakout with a role every bit as flinty, her dialogue brimming with frosty comebacks and mercurial wit.
“I basically feel like Paul Feig, the director, just paid for the most glamorous, expensive vacation of my life. So, I love that for me,” Kendrick told Good Morning America. (Supplied: Amazon Prime)
Another Simple Favor leans into their natural friction: fire against ice, the everygirl against the queen bee. Together, the pair trade aeriform jabs, joking about killing each other over martinis by the pool.
Their elasticated tension keeps the film on course, even as it threatens to rocket towards the absurd at any second.
Like its predecessor, Another Simple Favor lets no half-baked idea go untested. Among its sensational plot lines are poisonings, truth serums and dollar-store disguises — plus a body count at this hotel that would make even a White Lotus quiver.
It is, perhaps, less a film and more a ceaseless series of bombshells designed to gratify our most primitive desires. What is this franchise even about? I couldn’t tell you, but with this much spectacle, does that even matter?
