Lionsgate
It’s been a while since Hollywood has given us a really stylish mystery movie. Perhaps The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999 was the last great mystery that had a cool sense of style and fashion. But A Simple Favor has come along and fits the bill perfectly.
Single mom Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) seems to support herself and her son with a vlog she publishes featuring recipes and helpful homemaking tips. Stephanie is the over-achieving mom always volunteering for anything and everything at school, much to the amusement of the other non-participatory parents. Her son miles befriends Nicky Nelson and wants to have a play date but his mom isn’t so sure, especially after she meets Emily, his impossibly stylish yet abrasive mother who seems to value a cocktail over her son’s wants and needs. But perhaps it’s all a front as she relents and invites the Smotherses to her impossibly lavish home. The boys form a friendship and the moms bond over martinis and the Stephanie is elated to learn Emily’s husband is author and impossibly handsome Sean Townsend (Henry Golding), who really only wrote one book and gave up the author’s life to chase Emily, who works as a high-powered PR person for fashion designer Dennis Nylon (Rupert Friend).
Emily always has a fire to put out at work and Sean works at a local university, so Stephanie is always called upon to take care of Nicky until she can get home. The other ‘mothers’ in the group, led by Darren (Andrew Rannells), serve as a sort of Greek chorus to Stephanie’s life, commenting on how she’s now Emily’s nanny … and working for free. Stephanie insists they are best friends and she is not the nanny (she really is though). One day Emily calls and says she has a major issue at work … and then disappears. Stephanie does all she can to help Sean with Nicky and by posting to her vlog, asking for any help she can get to help find out where Emily is … hopefully alive.
That’s about all I’m going to share about the plot because A Simple Favor is a mystery filled with one plot twist after another that will keep you on your toes trying to figure who-, if anyone, dunit. And while the clever mystery unfolds, the film will keep you laughing as well. This is no heavy drama, this is a comedy, and a laugh-out-loud one at that. The script by Jessica Sharzer (based on the novel by Darcey Bell) is just full of clever humor that seems to come naturally out of the characters and situations. No one’s winking at the camera to let you know they’re also in on the joke. It’s just a perfect blend of comedy and mystery. And the direction by comedy master Paul Feig is sublime.
And with a great script and director, the real burden falls on the actors and Feig has scored some real gold here with Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. We know Kendrick can handle comedy superbly from her time in the Pitch Perfect franchise so she meets and exceeds expectations as the overly-bubbly Stephanie. Even when Emily says or does something that would truly shake a friendship, Kendrick lets that moment of hurt wash over her face but she quickly brushes it aside because … Emily is her friend, and she is desperate to have a friend (she has her own dark secrets to deal with that earns her an unfortunate nickname from Emily).
Where there may have been concerns about the cast is with Lively. I haven’t really seen her in anything since Gossip Girl, so I never really considered her a strong screen presence. But let me tell you, whatever preconceived notions I had about her talent have been swept away by her performance as Emily. Lively has taken what could have been a terribly self-centered, one-note character and really given her several dimensions. She’s rude and haughty, but there are times when she really seems to care about Stephanie … until she turns again it you realize that she just may be playing the woman like a fiddle. It’s really a complicated character and Lively handles Emily with aplomb. And she has a great wardrobe to book, always showing up in the most elegant (or outrageous) outfits. Lively really sinks her teeth into this role and she does a great job.
Golding takes on the thankless role of concerned husband/straight man to all that’s going on around him, and he’s fine, but there’s enough there that you always wonder if he’s in on things and playing Stephanie or if he’s just being used by Emily as well. Andrew Rannells is hilarious as the cattiest of the ‘moms’ and Jean Smart turns up later in the movie and … well, we can all use more Jean Smart in a movie. She only has one scene but she makes the most of it. Rupert Friend also has a few funny moments, especially when he first encounters Stephanie and berates her about her vintage Hermes scarf (while wearing the most ridiculous pair of pants I’ve ever seen).
The movie is filled with gorgeous scenery, locations and clothes and contains a sublime soundtrack of French pop tunes by artists including Francoise Hardy, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Dutronc and Brigitte Bardot, which just adds to the film’s stylishness. A Simple Favor is a breath of fresh air after a summer of blockbusters that will keep you guessing, and laughing, until the end.
A Simple Favor has a run time of 1 hour 56 minutes and rated R.
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