Capitalizing on the same success as 2014’s incredibly meticulous one Girl and 2016’s cluttered and underwhelming Girl on a Train comes Paul Feig’s (Bridesmaids, The Heat) adaptation of A Simple Favor, an adaptation of a 2017 novel by the same name. Unfortunately, that is what this movie feels like to me…a crappy knockoff with two Hollywood A-listers that was made hastily with a less than believable story by a director who was clearly over his head with this genre. This movie was preposterous in its concept and was only topped in absurdity by its cursory character development and inability to clearly define a genre, which leaves us asking as many questions about the movie’s style as it does its other elements.
Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air, Perfect Pitch) and Blake Lively (The Shallows, The Town) create such dynamic characters in the first twenty minutes. Stephanie (Kendrick) and Emily (Lively) had so many quirks and were opposites that you could have had so many different scripts for other films that would have worked. Stephanie is a widowed mother of a young elementary school son who earns her living as a video blogger, giving meal recipes, childraising techniques, home upkeeping shortcuts, and a variety of DIY tips to mothers across America of our vlogs starting with, “Hi, Moms. Stephanie here.” Stephanie is a wired, rule follower, do-gooder, straight-as-they-come woman whose constant upbeat attitude is as inspiring to some as it is annoying to others. One of those to find it initially annoying is Emily, a narcissistic, highly strung woman whose son Nicky is classroom friends with Stephanie’s son Marcus. The two moms meet for an impromptu playdate after school and form a quick friendship, despite being so different.
So if we first talk about style, I’ll say that Feig’s established early in this movie worked. Even though we know from the trailer that Emily disappears and Stephanie uses her vlog to find where she is and what happened to her when law enforcement leads all dry up, this movie feels (and even works) as a lighthearted comedy during its first act. Watching the striking contrast between the do-right Stephanie and the do-whatever Emily is fun. Kendrick and Lively dive into their characters in ways that almost make it feel like a comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live. Emily seemingly lives that life that Stephanie (or anybody) would want. She has a handsome husband. She lives in a lavish house. She has a high-powered job in New York City (the story takes place 90 minutes outside of the city in a quaint Connecticut suburb. With Emily, it’s never too early in the day for an alcoholic beverage, and never is there a situation where swearing is inappropriate. No topic is too taboo for Emily, often causing Stephanie to blush.
But not all is what it seems for the beautiful and fashionable Emily. Though her friendship is at its onset, Emily has no problems telling Stephanie everything. She and her husband Sean (Henry Golding – Crazy Rich Asians) have a loving and passionate (think newlywed) relationship, but they are in a ton of debt. Sean is an author with a successful book (conveniently read and admired at one time by Stephanie and her book club), but he hasn’t written anything in years. He works as an adjunct professor at a local college. Emily’s love for Nicky is evident, but so is her lack of consistency in wanting to parent. As we learn from Sean, she is entirely consistent, and whenever she can get someone to take on childcare duties (whether for a few hours or a few days), she will take them up. The only reason that Emily and Sean don’t have a nanny is that they can’t afford them. However, when Stephanie makes it known that she could watch Nicky whenever Emily is in a bind, Emily finds herself in a bind rather quickly and frequently. Though they’ve known each other for less than a week, they have become best friends. Believable? Not that much.
When Emily asks Stephanie to watch Nicky after school one day because of a demand at work that will keep her from coming home, her best friend agrees immediately. Suddenly it’s 10 p.m., and no word from Emily despite repeated phone calls and texts. Conveniently, Sean is in Europe after his mother broke her hip. Alibi maybe? Suspect maybe? Suddenly the absence becomes one day and then two. The unassuming Stephanie drives to the city to visit Emily’s place of employment to find more after her work says that Emily went to Miami. She meets her successful but imperious boss (Rupert Friend – the fabulous Peter Quinn from Showtimes’s Homeland), who tells her that he knows nothing about Emily going to Miami. Alibi maybe? Suspect maybe? We learn of other suspects in a similar fashion. And, everything up to this point in the movie is fine.
But then it spirals out of control. Author Darcey Bell who wrote the story, clearly thought she had the next great female heroine mystery story. And Feig, Kendrick, Lively, and BRON Studios either drank the spiked Kool-Aid or thought they could come up with a marketing campaign to get butts in the theaters based on star power and intrigue. And, in a significant way, they weren’t wrong. The critics and audiences liked this movie much more than I did (84% and 81%, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes). But Bell is no Paula Hawkins and certainly is no Gillian Flynn, whose mastery of style, storytelling, character development, and intrigue far exceeds her ability (at least in this film). In a matter of just a few weeks, Kendrick’s Stephanie transforms from an innocent, stay-at-home Mom who, in addition to her husband’s life insurance checks, picks up a few dollars through her vlog to this undercover detective who uses the same vlog to inform her viewers of the ongoings in Emily’s story. It’s a shift in a character that is impossible to buy, despite reasons which may occur. And even if you had a character who would have been capable and skilled enough to do the things that Stephanie was doing after Emily’s disappearance, you have the fundamental implausibility factor of the events and how they unfolded. There are too many coincidences and far too many turns inserted into this novel/film for no reason other than Bell felt that he could break all the rules after being inspired by the two novels/movies I’ve referenced in this review.
And then again, there is the whole style of the film. It starts with so much comedy that it seems impossible to switch to this serious mystery/suspense. It doesn’t work at all for me. It teetered too often on whether we were supposed to take this movie seriously or not. And as crafty as Flynn is with her characters and story-weaving as an author and David Fincher as a director, it feels like Bell and Feig don’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with their work in A Simple Favor. This movie often feels cheap and insults our intelligence as an audience. With each passing minute, it becomes more unbelievable. By the film’s end, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. And more than anything, I HATE ending credits that talk about what happened with the characters and where they are now when the movie is entirely fiction. It makes sense when based on a real story. It makes it laughable when based on a novelist’s imagination.
There might be an audience out there for this movie. It’s not me. For everything that Gone Girl does correctly, A Simple Favor fails. It felt like a waste of a Saturday afternoon for me.
Plot 5/10
Character Development 3/10
Character Chemistry 6/10
Acting 6/10
Screenplay 4/10
Directing 4/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 4/10
Hook and Reel 6/10
Universal Relevance 4/10
50%
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- The Gift
- The Girl on the Train
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
- Side Effects
- Derailed