One of the fun things for me about watching “A Simple Favor” when it hit theaters in 2018 was slowly figuring out that director Paul Feig was turning his adaptation of a suburban murder-mystery novel into a sly satire of the genre.
“A Simple Favor” laces the plot points of Darcey Bell’s source novel with understated deadpan humor, building to a finale that plays as absurd comedy while also committing to its shocking plot twists.
That tonal balance proves tough to replicate in the new sequel “Another Simple Favor,” which is now streaming on Prime Video. “A Simple Favor” was a solid box-office hit that has built up an even larger cult following over time, and it’s no longer surprising when viewers discover its comedic charms.
That means that Feig and returning screenwriter Jessica Sharzer (co-writing with Laeta Kalogridis) have to raise the stakes for their sequel. While “Another Simple Favor” has its entertaining moments, the filmmakers are clearly trying way too hard to deliver what audiences loved about the first movie — only more so.
‘Another Simple Favor’ is packed with plot
Since Bell never wrote a follow-up novel to “A Simple Favor,” Sharzer and Kalogridis had to come up with an entirely new plot for the sequel, and what they came up with is quite a lot.
Although it’s full of unexpected developments, the core plot of “A Simple Favor” is fairly straightforward, as suburban single mother Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) investigates the disappearance of her glamorous, mysterious friend Emily Nelson (Blake Lively). The movie ends with Emily in prison for an elaborate scheme that involved murdering her twin sister, but the initial setup is clear and easy to follow.
Right away, “Another Simple Favor” requires a great deal of additional set-up to reunite Stephanie, Emily and many of the supporting characters from the first movie, including Emily’s emasculated ex-husband Sean (Henry Golding). It’s unwieldy from the start, catching up with the characters five years later and then almost immediately whisking them away to the Italian island of Capri for a luxury wedding.
Sprung from prison thanks to an expensive team of high-powered lawyers, Emily is now set to marry the shady but wealthy Italian businessman Dante Versano (Michele Morrone). She crashes a bookstore reading of Stephanie’s book about the events of the first movie, and she invites/coerces Stephanie to be her maid of honor, claiming to have nothing but pure intentions.
Stephanie somewhat unconvincingly agrees, and when she arrives in Italy, she’s joined by Sean, Sean and Emily’s now-10-year-old son Nicky (Ian Ho), Emily’s mother Margaret (Elizabeth Perkins, replacing Jean Smart) and Emily’s heretofore unmentioned Aunt Linda (Allison Janney). That’s not to mention all the menacing members of Dante’s family, who are clearly mobsters.
Soon, the corpses start piling up, and Stephanie once again has to figure out whether to trust Emily while solving multiple murders and trying to keep herself alive. Andrew Rannells (as a fellow parent) and Bashir Salahuddin (as a local police detective) also return from the first movie, but they’re stuck mostly making phone calls as they stay behind in the U.S.
The humor and the violence are broader and sloppier
There’s no mistaking “Another Simple Favor” for anything other than a comedy, but it doesn’t have the clever subversiveness of the original movie. Instead, Feig relies on broad, vulgar humor, presenting Sean as a bitter drunk and Dante’s family as cartoonish Italian stereotypes.
The mix of deviousness and naïveté that Kendrick previously brought to Stephanie is replaced by endless quippiness, and Lively makes Emily more crude than confident. The filmmakers keep escalating the incest jokes that were amusingly transgressive in the original until they become tiresome.
The two stars still have excellent chemistry, and it’s still fun to watch them banter, especially in the early scenes as they’re warily sizing each other up, seeing if there’s something left of the friendship they previously established. Their connection gets muddled by the multiple new and returning characters, most of whom are largely superfluous.
Alex Newell adds little as Stephanie’s overly enthusiastic literary agent who tags along to the wedding, and Janney struggles to fit into the sinister dynamic of Emily’s twisted family. Useless subplots involving an incompetent FBI agent and a potentially botched case from Stephanie’s true-crime web series just mark time without providing either laughs or intrigue.
The single missing-persons case of the original movie is replaced by a grisly murder, but the characters remain so glib that the danger never seems heightened. The final confrontation is so cluttered with exposition and negotiations that it loses all urgency.
“A Simple Favor” was a coming-of-age story of sorts about the timid Stephanie finding her voice and standing up for herself, but “Another Simple Favor” is just a series of verbal and physical jabs that make little impact. The scenery and the outfits are still gorgeous to look at, but the element of surprise and wonder is completely gone.
“Another Simple Favor” is now streaming on Prime Video.
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