We’re big fans of the original A Simple Favor, a fun satire on true crime and mommy bloggers that seemed very timely given the rise of bloggers like Bailey Sarian, who mixed makeup tips with breakdowns of serial killers. Queue that up with Blake Lively playing against type of her public persona and Paul Feig’s comedic roll with directing hits like Bridesmaids, Spy and Freaks and Geeks along with Anna Kendrick and you had a winning formula. This, paired with a great comedic ensemble, makes A Simple Favor a great film. A film that you can rewatch over and over. It leaves a nice ending where Kendrick’s Samantha has parlayed her role as a struggling mother into a successful YouTube career as a mommy blogger-slash-crime solver for hire.
When Amazon announced they were doing a sequel to this film, the premise seemed really novel. Samantha Smothers could be Amazon’s Benoit Blanc — serving up brownie recipes as she travelled around the country or world solving crimes and having parenting issues she could call on her YouTube followers to aid her with. A Simple Favor could’ve been Amazon’s Knives Out. Here, it feels like they went sort of literal with that, as Another Simple Favor largelly feels like Glass Onion meets White Lotus Season 2. A bit of rehash and a novel location are the tricks this sequel offers, and they’re not very successful. Another Simple Favor does itself no favors eroding Samantha’s success at the end of the original. She’s now a failed writer, and her book about Blake Lively’s caper in the first film – The Faceless Blonde — is floundering as she stages book signings to try and raise the sales of her book. At one of these, Lively’s Emily shows up (somehow she’s released from prison pending a court appeal on her conviction – don’t tug on this card, the whole movie is built on nonsensical ideas that fall apart if you think about them too hard). She implores Samantha to travel with her to Capri for her wedding as her maid of honor or she’ll sue her for copyright infringement. Thus, the film shifts to Capri where Emily is marrying Dante (Subservience’s Michelle Morrone), a mafioso whose wedding to Emily is meant to end their blood feud with another mafia family the Bellotos. For some reason, Sean (Henry Fielding) is invited to the wedding, now a bitter failed writer/teacher and former partner to both Emily and Samantha. He insults Dante at a pre-wedding dinner and subsequently finds himself on the wrong end of death – by someone whom he recognizes. But whole the obvious suspect would be Emily, who after all is on appeal for attempted murder of Henry, its Samantha who becomes suspect especially once another prominent figure in Emily’s life meets his end.
To be fair here, the first two acts of this move are a slough. It doesn’t help that some of the best characters in the franchise meet their ends here or are recast (Jean Smart is dearly missed here). Allison Janney shows up as Emily’s aunt and its not hard to suss out she’s involved in these murders. However, the twist to explain how she’s involved is incredulous and kind of erodes one of the best lines in the original for a weird rehash. And, reader, the twist is beyond weird, as we find Emily’s long lost triplet Charity (also played by Lively) is killing those close to Emily so she can get close to her as she feels they are one and that’s in a biblical sense (one wonders how much of the budget was spent on scenes of Lively making out with herself – yes it happens more than once). Yet, even here, its played odd as Charity is little more than a childlike automaton who does the bidding of her master. Her character’s arc is largely to give Emily wings to do other things and hang the next installment of the franchise on her and not Kendrick’s character.
I think that’s largely what makes you scratch your head at this film. That this series seemed designed to follow Kendrick’s character around and writing advantures around her seems easy enough. The film’s best scenes are those with Kendrick, not Lively. Yet the third act seems to set up Lively as a John Wick meets Dirty Rotten Scoundrels character doing “favors” on behalf of the mafia. This juxtaposed with scenes of the rest of the film’s ensemble throughout being dumb white people in Italy largely makes most of the film feel like a lazy White Lotus rehash (having Lively and Kendrick tool around on the same Vespa you see Jennifer Coolidge tool around on in Season 2 down to the color doesn’t help).
Overall, I really wanted more from Another Simple Favor – there’s a good third act twist I don’t get into, but this film LITERALLY suffers from too much Blake Lively and not enough intrigue surrounding the deaths of these characters. The fact that literally no one seems bothered by Sean’s death at all is kind of mystifying given how much of the first film was around grief related to Emily’s faked death. I hoped for a lot more.
ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOR
** AND 1/2 * OF 5
Pretty vistas don’t make up for a largely reheated storyline driven by plot and literally too much Blake Lively
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VIDEO REVIEW