Where does one go after the disastrously received, all-female reboot of Ghostbusters? While I’ll freely admit that, while noticably inferior, Paul Feig’s colourful and fun retake wasn’t anywhere close to the cinematic heresy that some detractors insisting on naming it – however, that didn’t stop the director of Bridesmaids and The Heat from having a serious rethink when it came to the direction of his career. Ditching the endless riffing and presence of frequent collaborator Melissa McCarthy, he returned with A Simple Favour, a tongue in cheek salute to old school noir that saw hapless people caught up in the web-like lies and lives of glamorous con artists. But in addition to the feel of a bygone genre, Feig also added a very modern feel that played into our desperate need to hear juicy, salacious details concerning everyone from the rich and famous to out own closest friends. Can Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively manage to spill vast quantities of tea while looking damn good doing it?
Perky widow Stephanie Smothers is a tireless mother for her young son and well known/tolerated by the other parents for her willingness to get involved in every single school activity while simultaneously running her own crafts and recipes vlog from her home in Warfield, Connecticut. One day, in a random quirk of fate, she becomes friends with the glamorous and elusive Emily Nelson who is the mother to Stephanie’s son’s best friend, but while she basks in the glow of the woman’s style and no-bullshit attitude, it seems that Emily is actually a little lonely and hungers for a little friendship. While Stephanie admires her friend’s confidence, she’s even more impressed by her job at a PR firm and her english professor husband, Sean, which creates the illusion of a perfect life, but it also means that during a drunken conversation, the two women share some intimate sectets about one another.
One day, Stephanie gets a call from Emily asking her to do a relatively simple favour while she’s out of town and pick up her son from school, however after days pass with no word from her friend, everyone starts to get nervous that something terrible has happened. As time goes on, Stephanie grows closer to Sean as she consoles him over his missing wife before some devastating news hits. Despite claiming to be in Maimi, Emily’s heroine ravaged body is found floating in the lake of a Michigan summer camp and making matters even more suspicious is that Sean had recently taken out a hefty, $4 million life insurance policy out on her. Worse yet, in the midst of comforting the dishy, grieving husband, Stephanie goes a little too far with her emotions which starts to make it look like she’s muscled in or Emily’s so-called perfect existence. But when Emily’s son has claimed he’s seen her alive and Stephanie gets some threatening letters, everything gets thrown into the air. Is Emily alive or dead? If alive, whose body was found? Is Sean as perfect as he seems? And what the fuck has Stephanie gotten herself into?
I’ve heard A Simple Favour described as a far more camp version of David Fincher’s Gone Girl and in this gossip motivated world in which we live, it’s actually not a bad description. In fact, while it’s obvious Paul Feig is having a ball delving into all the noir tropes and blitzing them in stylish fashions and 1960s French pop and lounge music, it’s seems that after making a bunch of raucous comedies back to back, he’s been itching to try something with a little bit more subtlety. I mean, I say subtlety, but A Simple Favour delights in taking it’s time to set up the players properly and then goes hell for leather to bury all that it’s made in lies, twists and fasp inducing revelations that feeds mightily on our need to talk and hear shit about one another.
However, while Feig spices things up to the nth degree, he seems to be relying entirely on the combined charisma of both Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively to carry the increasingly batshit plot along and thankfully for all concerned, the pair are more than up to the job. Kendrick has always been an endearing presence and her talent for razor sharp line deliveries is given free reign here, but in the role of the rather sweet Stephanie, the actress gets to play with some rather fun stuff. Obviously the actress starts as the unmitigated nice girl, giving out on-screen advice about baking brownies and advise as one of those mums that seemingly good at everything, but as the plot creeps on and shades of grey start to intrude, Kendrick get to play in that darkness a little as events around her take progressively darker turns. A lot of those turns comes from Blake Lively’s Emily Nelson who proves to be a impressively intimidating beast as the actress switches fully into bitch mode to portray the absurdly enigmatic mother who seems to be able to manipulate others at will and seeming has the world eating out of her hand. However, much like Gone Girl before it, Emily really isn’t everything that she seems and while I don’t want to give away too much, the killer fashions and direct life lessons give the actress plenty to play with.
However, the best thing about A Simple Favour ends being a chink in its armour too. You see, for all of Paul Feig’s efforts to create a full blown movie version of the trashiest airport novel you’ve ever read, the movie can’t shake the fact that it’s arch campness and plot inverting twists have been described as “Gone Girl for gays”. Now, while that’s hardly a bad thing, it’s fun, playful and quite ridiculous nature means that it’s more of a sugary snack when compared to the complex meal of David Fincher’s argument starter and while there’s always room for both in this wide world of ours, A Simple Favour ends up noticably the lesser of the two. Also, much like a complaint I had with The Housemaid – Feig’s cheeky, 2025 ode to the psychological thrillers of the 90s – the director let’s things percolate a little too long before launching ahead with his onslaught of twists and it feels like a rollercoaster that’s taking forever to get to the drop.
With that being said, none of those stops A Simple Favour from fulfilling the majority of needs required for a fun watch and if you’re familiar with the tropes that the film is attempting to poke fun at while simultaneously adherering to them religiously, you’ll enjoy yourself even more. Additionally, it’s genuinely great to watch Anna Kendrick get to cut loose and play with so many speeds – hell, she even gets to be steamy with Henry Golding which caused me to mutter “good for her” after a string of nice girl roles.
Boozy brunch loving gossip mongers will lap this flick up like a glass of complementary Prosecco and you’ve got to love Feig’s effort to make this film both as classy and as trashy as he possibly can. However, while the movie ties itself more knots than a stoned snake, it’s the combined, grounding efforts of Kendrick and Lively that does this movie the biggest favour…
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