Is “A Simple Favor” worth a weekend date night? NO.
The film is an attempt at a Hitchcockian thriller by director Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids,” “Spy”). It follows a seemingly naïve woman trying to solve the disappearance of her mysterious best friend. She realizes that nothing is what it seems. But the movie’s laughs undercut the thrills, and the darker moments weaken the laughs.
There haven’t been very many Hitchcock-style thrillers lately—films that follow average men or women into an incredible twisted plot that challenges their perceptions of life. When they do, today’s thrillers often take advantage of the R rating’s ability to be ultra-graphic in terms of language and violence. These films are unpleasant to watch on a date.
That’s why I had high hopes for this weekend’s new movie “A Simple Favor.” It stars the appealing young stars Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in a twisted plot overseen by director Paul Feig. Feig is the current master of female-driven comedies (“Bridesmaids,” “The Heat,” “Spy”). But this film has a different kind of problem from ones like “The Girl on the Train.” Feig and screenwriter Jessica Sharzer weave in too much humor. They let the performances have a highly campy tone that ruins much of the tension and making it harder to care about what happens to anyone in it.
The movie opens on perky and seemingly naïve and innocent young widowed mom, Stephanie (Kendrick). The audience watches Stephanie on her “mommy vlog”, where she gives tips on being a good mom and homemaker. The twist? Stephanie also talks about how her best friend Emily (Lively) has disappeared. She’ll go on to discuss her efforts to find her with her followers.
The story then jumps back to how their friendship developed. Stephanie is a seemingly complete opposite from Emily, who is ice-cold to everyone else and is incredibly rude to her boss and her husband Sean (Golding). Emily has a beautiful designer home, yet speaks with disdain about it. She starts repeatedly asking Stephanie – who is living off the life insurance payoff from her husband’s death in a car crash – to do “a simple favor” by watching her young son on increasingly frequent occasions.
A surprising investigation
One night, Emily completely disappears. She leaves Stephanie watching her son for days since Sean is visiting his hospitalized mother overseas. As Stephanie starts to realize she’s being taken advantage of, she starts to toughen up and investigate what’s really going on with Emily and her life.
Then, Emily is found dead in a river.
Sean soon makes a grief-stricken romantic move on Stephanie. The two begin an affair that leads to her moving in with him. But soon, she starts to notice signs that Emily might actually be alive. This leads to an ever-escalating series of plot twists.
This may all make “A Simple Favor” sound like an intriguing Hitchcockian thriller, and for a while it works. But while director Paul Feig is the king of successful female-starring comedies these days, his attempt to switch into a different genre is hampered by his refusal to play it straight and serious enough.
The movie has too much happen too quick. This means that many of its plot twists seem absurd as the characters make major life decisions in ridiculously quick fashion. It seems that Feig and screenwriter Jessica Sharzer are trying to have it both ways as both a comedy and a thriller, leaving the laughs not strong enough, while weakening the surprises.
Comedy lessens thrills, twists are more shocking than funny
The campy tone of the lead female performances also undercuts the dramatic elements of the movie. This makes it nearly impossible to take these people seriously enough to care what happens to them. Frankly, “Crazy Rich Asians” breakout star Henry Golding does a better job with the all-serious role of Sean than leading ladies Kendrick and Lively do with their performances.
Feig shoots most of the goings-on with some discretion. Sex and violence are relatively brief and mostly implied. But you should be warned that there’s a large, graphic painting of Emily nude in the foreground. Movie-goers see the painting repeatedly in the movie.
While a painting may not sound like a big deal compared to a filmed person, the movie ratings board found it strong enough to rate the movie R partly for graphic nudity.
More shocking is a flashback story in which Stephanie admits she had sex with a half-brother she never knew she had. The two met at their father’s memorial service. This leads Emily to call her a “brother f—er” several times, in an envelope-pushing twist on language.
Overall, “A Simple Favor” has the simple flaw of not taking itself seriously enough for the audience to care. Everyone involved look like they had a blast making it, but in the end, it seems like a two-hour “Saturday Night Live” sketch spoofing these kinds of thrillers, when a six-minute sketch would have been plenty.
The breakdown
Plot: 5 out of 10
Characters: 6 out of 10
Thrills: 4 out of 10
Laughs: 5 out of 10
Overall: 5 out of 10
