'A Simple Favor': Film Review

[Nergal]

 

Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively play suburban-mom BFFs, one of whom goes missing, in Paul Feig's cheeky neo-noir.


After helping redefine what funny women could look like, sound like and do onscreen, Paul Feig takes a left turn with the seductively mounted but underwhelming neo-noir-comedy A Simple Favor. A twisted tale of toxic female friendship, the film offers its share of pleasures: eye candy in human, sartorial and real-estate form, as well as the unmistakable flair of a director and performers who know their way around a piece of pop entertainment. But the result leaves you scratching your head. The mystery isn’t how or why one of the main characters disappears halfway through; it’s what drew Feig to the project to begin with.


If you squint hard enough, you can almost see it. As much as any working American filmmaker, Feig adores women: He’s given us two glorious female-fronted farces, Bridesmaids and Spy, and one solid one, The Heat; his Ghostbusters reboot didn’t work, but was so filled with affection for its actresses that one was tempted to give it a “thought that counts” pass. And in A Simple Favor, there are plum parts for Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, appealing stars whom Feig guides smoothly through the plot’s sudden swerves and swings.


But the movie never sheds its aura of talented people trying to class up cheap material. Adapted by Jessica Sharzer (Nerve) from Darcey Bell’s 2017 novel, A Simple Favor pulls from a plethora of sources — Gone Girl, Rebecca, Gaslight, Double Indemnity, Diabolique — some of which the screenplay literally namechecks; it’s less homage or even pastiche than a bargain-basement mash-up of various superior inspirations.


Feig works hard, for the first 40 minutes or so, to put his imprint on it all, an effort bolstered by Kendrick’s reliably excellent timing as a perky Connecticut helicopter mother who befriends Lively’s gorgeous mean-girl mom. Yet despite some giggles and delicious touches (Rupert Friend as a bitchy designer? Yes please, and thank you), the tongue-in-cheek tone and satirical targets feel tired: Something-rotten-in-the-state-of-suburban-Mommyhood themes have at this point been unpacked ad nauseum, and dysfunction-lurking-beneath-carefully-curated-lives narratives all but exhausted. Movies and TV series have gone there, again and again, from Desperate Housewives to Big Little Lies, Bad Moms and far beyond.