A Simple Favor (2018)
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A Simple Favor Movie Review
A Simple Favor is a 2018 comedy mystery thriller film directed by Paul Feig and starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. It’s a flawed, but hugely entertaining movie.
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“She’s an enigma, my wife.
You can get close to her,
but you never quite reach her.
She’s like a beautiful ghost“
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It follows a vlogger who meets and befriends a rich, dangerous woman and when she disappears, it is up to her to find out what happened to her friend. Now, the movie is very entertaining and the first half I absolutely loved, but the second half somewhat ruined it for me owing to some developments which I simply did not adore.
The mystery was really engaging and the movie also works as a black comedy owing to some quite amusing dark situations well played for laughs. However, in the thriller department it fails because the twist I saw coming from a mile away and also that ending got exceedingly silly in its procedures. It was fun, but still implausible and maybe even ridiculous. But I still find that entire first half to be such an involving, wonderfully executed mystery flick.
Henry Golding is very good here as Sean Townsend and I am happy that his career is taking off as, even though I really disliked ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, I found him very good there and here he is easily the only sympathetic character of the bunch. But that wasn’t the problem for the movie as Stephanie and Emily, even though both unlikable and irritating, are still realistic and very interesting. Anna Kendrick was typecast, but still perfect for this role. Blake Lively was terrific in this proactive, mysterious role and both were well cast and both played off each other so well.
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A Simple Favor is also very well directed by Paul Feig whom this directorial job suited in terms of the sensibilities so well. The movie also looks great owing to some terrific locations and interiors while it’s also well paced and well written in its dialogue. Again, I adored its mystery at first, but the twist I found overly predictable, at least for me who watches a lot of movies. I still really liked this film, especially as it was so entertaining, but I expected more from its messy third act.
A Simple Favor is seriously offset by its overly predictable twist and an especially messy finale, but nonetheless the movie remains a very engaging, fun mystery with a terrific first half, good dialogue, solid humor and two very memorable turns from both Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively.
