Review: Another Simple Favour

Director:  Paul Feig

Stars:  Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick, Alex Newell

Hot on the heels of The Accountant², here comes another belated sequel to a surprise mid-budget hit from the 2010s that has secured a strong portion of the original’s creative team. Director Paul Feig is back along with the original’s co-author Jessica Sharzer and in spite of whatever rumoured disagreements there may have been between them, co-leads Anna Kendrick and Blake Likely reprise their roles as twee vlogger Stephanie Smothers and batshit crazy clotheshorse Emily Nelson respectively. 

When we last spilled tea with these two, Feig presented us a luxurious skewering of Good Housekeeping Americana; campy, scandalous and ridiculous in all the right ways and always decked out in the dreamiest outfits and most incredible shoes (seriously, A Simple Favour is mostly about the shoes). But it’s been seven years since all that chic melodrama. Surely enough time has passed for these two desperate housewives to chill out a little?

We join Stephanie vlogging from the island of Capri where she is apparently under house arrest for killing Emily’s dirtbag ex-husband Sean (Henry Golding, also back!). Swiftly we enter flashback mode as Stephanie recounts her story. All the local Connecticut parents have packed their pre-teens off to camp, handily allowing this universe’s cadre of pastel-hued parents the free time to meddle in each other’s affairs unsupervised. 

Stephanie has written a glossy tell-all about Emily’s criminal past. Of course her subject gatecrashes a book reading in bejewelled heels, fresh out of prison on appeal… in order to invite Stephanie to be her maid of honor! In Europe! Shocker! One private jet ride later and we’ve made it to the Italian isle and the gruff clutches of mid-level mobster and groom-to-be Dante (Michele Morrone). Here the dangler is Emily’s motivation. Has she really buried the hatchet with Stephanie, or is she prepping to bury a hatchet in Stephanie? Then there’s a murder. And another. And another. But where Another Simple Favour could have flexed like a modern American riposte to the giallo, it coasts on Stephanie’s Nancy Drew routine and a bevy of soused put-downs at a wedding reminiscent of John Wick Chapter 2.

Where Ben Affleck was afforded another chance to wow at the multiplex, it’s gravely telling that Another Simple Favour has been consigned to the small screen anonymity of streaming. Feig and Sharzer are a shade over-keen to embrace self-parody. Perhaps the passing of seven years has granted them license to apply nostalgia to the first movie and lean into it’s glamedy, but Feig’s follow-up goes hard with a script more concerned with shady zingers and dated pop culture references (Titanic? Single White Female??) than ingenuity. It particularly thrives on the intervening reclamation of the C-bomb. What starts out as indulgently spicy soon becomes a bit withering. When Dante pleads for Sean to “shut the fuck up”… you’re kind of with him.

Of course, Feig being Feig, this is mostly window dressing for a gorgeous setting and divine outfits. These elements are even more exuberant than last time (that hat!) and entirely indicative of Feig’s consistent sensibilities. Floral patterns and paisley adorn one and all as prevalently as efforts to make it look like Lively’s tits might pop out from an open blazer or a wedding dress or a rose-encrusted bustier. Allison Janney’s addition as Emily’s catty aunt Linda is – appropriately – pitch perfect. And while Janney doesn’t get to spitball with the great Jean Smart (the only OG player to have been recast), Elizabeth Perkins makes do taking on the mantle of mad matriarch Margaret, quietly sassing up scenes in the background. They’re not the only new players to swerve attention. Alex Newell eats up any and all screen time given as Stephanie’s new suburban bestie Vicky, even if she is boxed into a decidedly cliché role. 

Still, the tepid story lets all of this down. This is a standing definition of a diminished return. Soundtrack cuts like Lesley Gore’s classic “You Don’t Own Me” are immaculately on-point, but also a little too on-brand, y’know? For a title that formerly thrived on curveballs, where are the surprises (is incest really an essential aspect of this property’s brio)? Feig has nestled into streamer – ugh – content for a few years now and Another Simple Favour shows indicative low ambition. It’s a passable puff piece snot short on silliness, but the sense of risk and verve that bristled through it’s predecessor eludes. 

“I’m not feeling entertained…” Lively breathes, “…or amused.” Unfortunately Emily’s ‘event from hell’ garners similar sentiments. At least Kendrick’s still in touch with her comedic instincts and Feig still knows how to hang clothes on people.