A Simple Favor
It’s Tuesday night at 7 PM. You see a movie that opened four days earlier. The concessions line is thirty minutes long1. There isn’t a single open seat in the entire theatre. The crowd is rowdy. Laughing. Screaming. Applauding! This must be The Avengers. Maybe even the next Harry Potter movie, right? Wrong. This is A Simple Favor.
A Simple Favor kicks off strong with Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie, a single mother working as a not so successful video blogger, announcing that her best friend, Blake Lively’s Emily, has been missing for several days. Immediate thoughts:
- This video blog thing is a little weird. Stephanie getting more than 18 views surprises me.
- Okay, now Stephanie is crying on the blog over Emily. I feel like she should be teaching everyone how to make a pastry or a friend bracelet, not crying on screen.
- This movie looks like it’s going to be a lighter version of Gone Girl. I can get down with that.
From here, the movie kicks back a few weeks to the beginning of Stephanie and Emily’s “friendship,” and the ride begins. Watching this movie, you would think that these two have been doing on screen together for years. Kendrick’s your active, yet conservative single mother while Lively is out here dropping an f-bomb every three words. They shouldn’t be friends. They should literally never hang out. But after watching for just a few minutes, it becomes clear that the only characters that really matter in this movie are Stephanie and Emily, and It’s awesome.
I really didn’t expect it going in, as I thought I was going to see more of a thriller, but A Simple Favor is a straight up comedy. A lot of the credit should rightfully go to screenplay writer Jessica Sharzer, who created a truly laugh out loud script from the source material, but Kendrick and Lively steal the show, specifically Lively. Emily, one of the more vulgar movie characters of the year, constantly berates Stephanie, who can only apologize for being nice, which leads to more berating on Emily’s part. The chemistry between them is shockingly impressive as they both hit levels I had never seen from either of them before. I never wanted it to end.
But, of course, Emily just had to go missing. Everyone knew it was going to happen and it wasn’t a surprise when she suddenly wasn’t there, but I really wanted her there. The best part of this movie is Lively and Kendrick on screen TOGETHER, and I wanted way more of it. But, good news, when all of the focus shifts towards Stephanie becoming this movie’s Nancy Drew, Kendrick delivers. Clearly a stay at home Mom and not a detective, she is super awkward, yet pretty funny in her own right. I kept expecting the Gone Girl vibe to kick in, and while it does for a moment or two, A Simple Favor holds true to how it started as a rip-roaring comedy.
Verdict: Couldn’t Blow if it Tried
After a month of junk, A Simple Favor is exactly what the doctor ordered. It will make you laugh. It will probably surprise you. But most importantly, it won’t make you think “Man, this is dumb.” Isn’t that all we really want out of these things? Something that doesn’t suck? Well, this doesn’t suck! It’s actually pretty great! The crowd that Shammy and I experienced needed to settle the hell down, but we weren’t complaining when we walked out. Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively put on a hell of a show and I can’t wait to see it again. A Simple Favor for the win!
Scenario to Watch: See it in theaters, you’ll be kicking yourself if you wait until it pops up on HBO. If it ever hits FX, don’t bother. A Simple Favor will stink edited for TV.
