A Simple Favor

Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is a super mom.  She volunteers for everything at her son's school and has a daily vlog where she offers recipes, tips, and various helpful advice for parents.  The other parents call themselves 'bad parents' by comparison.  Her son's best friend is Nicky and it just so happens that Nicky wants a play date.  Nicky's mom, Emily (Blake Lively) relents and invites Stephanie and her son to the house.  Emily is almost the polar opposite of Stephanie.  Initially shocked by Emily's demeanor, she is soon entranced and starts doing favors, mostly picking Nicky up from school.  Emily has a high-profile job with a fashion designer.  Her husband, Sean (Henry Golding) is a college professor and wrote a book that Stephanie loved.  In fact, Stephanie and Sean have instant chemistry.  After several weeks, Emily suddenly disappears.  Stephanie quickly discovers that she didn't know Emily as well as she thought she did.

 

Though frequently funny, A Simple Favor touches on many dark subjects: patricide, fratricide, incest, drug use, and alcoholism.  This is not the typical light-hearted silliness one expects from Paul Feig.  Of course, it is a dramatic improvement from his Ghostbusters reboot.  Anna Kendrick is terrific, as usual.  She pulls off a combination of awkward, sweet, hyper competent, and insightful.  If a sequel was made about her future sleuthing exploits, I would gladly see it.  By contrast, Blake Lively didn't bring her character to life nearly as well.  Emily is thoroughly unlikeable with no positive traits beyond her looks.  Pretty women can get away with a lot but with this personality, not for long.  Also, she inexplicably ruins her plans by foolishly goading her adversaries.  Henry Golding plays a hapless and clueless husband.  Like Lively, he didn't pull off the character.  By the end of the movie, it is hard to accept that this handsome, well-educated man was so obtuse and incurious as to be seduced by this unappealing shrew.

 

The movie drags on a bit too long.  There is a confrontation scene that looked like it might be the climax but then there was more movie.  It has a lot of great scenes and Kendrick carries the movie.  If you're a fan of hers, go see this movie.  If not, wait for Netflix.