A Simple Favor
Directed by: Paul Feig
Written by: Jessica Sharzer - Based on the novel by Darcey Bell
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Linda Cardellini, Jean Smart, Rupert Friend, Bashir Salahuddin, Andrew Rannells, Kelly McCormack, Aparna Nancherla, Roger Dunn, Ian Ho, Joshua Satine
Comedy/Crime/Drama - 117 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 12 Sep 2018
Written by: Jessica Sharzer - Based on the novel by Darcey Bell
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Linda Cardellini, Jean Smart, Rupert Friend, Bashir Salahuddin, Andrew Rannells, Kelly McCormack, Aparna Nancherla, Roger Dunn, Ian Ho, Joshua Satine
Comedy/Crime/Drama - 117 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 12 Sep 2018
There is a lot of plot swirling around A Simple Favor. A woman has disappeared. Did she run away? Is she dead? Sleuthing for clues and peeling back onion layers takes up most of the film’s time and it’s almost all plot – our protagonist must go here to find this thing out and then go over there and then back here. When that happens to a story, characters get lost. Places and things become more important than the who. It’s a shame because the audience latches onto the few scintillating scenes between A Simple Favor’s two leading ladies and yearns for more. One is a widowed, goody-two-shoes homemaker and the other a pit viper business woman who could just as easy verbally tear you limb from limb as make you the driest martini ever concocted. Imagine Doris Day and Marlene Dietrich day-drinking, confiding secrets, and generating conspiracy theories. Sounds pretty intriguing right? If only given the chance.
Anna Kendrick (The Accountant) plays over-achieving mom of the year, Stephanie Smothers. Stephanie alienates the other PTA parents because she volunteers for everything and creates the most perfect decorations and desserts a mom can make. She runs a vlog showing how to create yummy brownies, make intricate friendship bracelets, and fretting about the whereabouts of her best friend, Emily Nelson (Blake Lively, Café Society). Only a woman with no other friends would refer to the woman she has been hanging out with on some afternoons for a couple weeks as her best friend. Emily takes advantage of Stephanie’s open schedule and reliable babysitting skills to secure free nanny services for her son. Stephanie argues she helps out Emily because they are besties and Emily would do the same for her. I am uncertain whether Stephanie believes that statement or not, but hey, if having a friend as cool and confident as Emily means some childcare, then so be it.
Anna Kendrick (The Accountant) plays over-achieving mom of the year, Stephanie Smothers. Stephanie alienates the other PTA parents because she volunteers for everything and creates the most perfect decorations and desserts a mom can make. She runs a vlog showing how to create yummy brownies, make intricate friendship bracelets, and fretting about the whereabouts of her best friend, Emily Nelson (Blake Lively, Café Society). Only a woman with no other friends would refer to the woman she has been hanging out with on some afternoons for a couple weeks as her best friend. Emily takes advantage of Stephanie’s open schedule and reliable babysitting skills to secure free nanny services for her son. Stephanie argues she helps out Emily because they are besties and Emily would do the same for her. I am uncertain whether Stephanie believes that statement or not, but hey, if having a friend as cool and confident as Emily means some childcare, then so be it.
Emily has the presence of an unflinching hurricane. As the head of PR for an A-list fashion designer, Emily zips around their small Connecticut suburb in her Porsche, lives in an Architectural Digest ready house, and appears so above it all, boredom is her main mood in life. When they first meet, Emily complains to her six year-old about how she let him tear her labia on his way out so the least he can do is behave and then asks Stephanie if she drinks. The answer to this question will determine whether or not their sons may have a playdate. Later, Emily has no shame in showing off the in-your-face genitalia painting on the wall depicting her at an earlier phase in life. These two women could not be more different, but perhaps that is why they enchant one another.
These tête-á-têtes abruptly terminate when Emily calls Stephanie requesting some brief childcare and then vanishes. A Simple Favor morphs from suburban ennui dark comedy into a whodunit Agatha Christie mystery. Was it Emily’s writer husband, Sean (Henry Golding)? Sean wrote one successful novel and is now a has-been college professor. There are signs of financial trouble and hints of infidelity, but Sean has an ironclad alibi. Was it Emily's boss, Dennis Nylon (Rupert Friend, The Death of Stalin)? The company flunkies obviously know more about Emily than what they are telling and Dennis emits a skin-crawling vibe of over-attachment. But Stephanie is on the case. At first, she is worried for Emily’s son and later appears to relish a newfound sense of assertive can-do attitude, similar to Emily.
Stephanie and Sean grow closer consoling each other. Jessica Sharzer’s script, adapted from the 2017 debut novel by Darcey Bell, commits egregious speeding violations as the relationship between Stephanie and Sean moves far too fast for any semblance of believability. The adapted from a novel feeling is all too present since there is so much story to shoehorn into one script and the audience should be forgiven for the Gone Girl vibes which inevitably seep through the material as that colossal book and film’s notoriety re-defined the genre for the next few decades. Linda Cardellini and Jean Smart are effective in supporting roles as they offer their respective clues to Stephanie who maintains a Nancy Drew-like persistence.
The presence of Linda Cardellini is a clue director Paul Feig is involved as he likes to cast actors from his early days helming Freaks and Geeks. Lately, Feig is known for Melissa McCarthy slapstick comedies like Bridesmaids, the Ghostbusters remake, and Spy, but A Simple Favor shows he can weave suspense and tension as well; it’s not his fault the script throws the pacing off. As the mystery clears and double crosses turn into triple crosses, the cluttered climax reminds us how much we miss the one-on-one, back and forth between Kendrick and Lively from early on. There was even a hint of sexual tension between them, fitting due to the Marlene Dietrich vibe I picked up from Lively. The duo had something here. Emily is certainly more gripping than Stephanie to watch, but Kendrick scores her moments as she confronts Sean with the rousing, “Are you Diaboliquing me?” Any sentence like that is a friend of mine.
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