Written by: Jessica Sharzer & Laeta Kalogridis
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Elizabeth Perkins
Rating: [1.5/5]
Time and time again we know of films that bring in an invigorating and exciting story that needs no sequel but we get one anyway. Decisions made for obvious financial reasons but at the very least we can hope to receive a decent follow-up to something we enjoyed the first time around. Unfortunately, hope is all we had with Another Simple Favor where it decides to up the ante in every way but catastrophically fails.
Now a published author based on her crazy life experience. Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) gets confronted again by the infamous Emily (Blake Lively), who’s unsurprisingly out of prison and threateningly asks Stephanie to be her maid of honor for her upcoming nuptials. Forced to go along with this new favor, Stephanie travels to Italy where she has this growing fear that Emily will finally get revenge.
Still to this day one the most audacious dark comedies in recent memory, A Simple Favor stunned with its ability to shock with the turns it took even when things got over the top. A true treasure that unlocked the very best out of Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. If a sequel was going to happen then the prospect of them reuniting with Paul Feig would make any fan of the first film excited to see what other sick and twisted ways these characters will further entangle themselves in each other’s lives.
From the beginning the outline presupposes the idea that Emily somehow has received a reprieve from a prison sentence locked in through irrefutable evidence. The only reason for her suddenly being able to jet set around the world is that she’s marrying some rich man, which the film has us believe completely undoes everything that happened in the previous film especially in the way Emily coerces Stephanie to attend the wedding. Right from the start we learn that this story no longer has any real stakes and it only gets worse from there.
Now in Italy for what looks to be a fabulous affair, Stephanie remains on her heels with her rightfully fearing that Emily will enact her revenge at any point. We meet some new characters, which includes the family Emily will marry into and some familiar faces, such as the man at the center of the previous film, Sean (Henry Goulding). Ideally this would make for some interesting scenes as all of these pieces come together but the film then shifts into this overly silly murder mystery where Stephanie gets stuck right in the middle of it all. It’s in this plot progression where it shows this sequel had no interest in exploring what fundamentally made the first film so entertaining, which stemmed from the intrigue and internalized jealousy one could have for another. This happening specifically in the motherhood space and how Stephanie grew this obsession with learning more about Stephanie allowed for something beguiling. This sequel now takes Stephanie as this true crime detective savant that even has police resources available to her to get to the bottom of this situation.
Decision after decision made in this feature took away all of the stakes, all of the intrigue, and demonstrated that Feig just wanted to reconnect these characters to create more shocking twists that ultimately just feel like a waste of an opportunity. They no longer had the same shocking effect because they felt far too shoehorned in and do not make sense. There is, of course, a grand reveal made in this film that harkens back to one of the most shocking elements of the previous film, but the way the repetition gets done in this film just feels lazy. An apt description for plenty of what happens in this film, which only further exacerbates the massive disappointment this proved to be.
Starting in ridiculousness and never relenting, Another Simple Favor carries an artifice that does not make for an enjoyable film. It simply exists to create this shock that never really feels earned. Therefore, we receive a film filled with things that just happen with nothing truly grounding it at its center where we must just take in these silly plot progressions all in service for these twists. Truly a terrible film, sequel, and I will hope to forget about this one and continue to appreciate what came before it.
Films with Josh 
