Blake Lively’s a screen goddess. I’ve often wondered how she can be that stunningly attractive and that simultaneously sweet. Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, says she always meets everything, including hatred, with empathy. This makes me, much like Napoleon Dynamite, want to close my eyes, audibly exhale, and say, “Luck-eeee!”
But in “A Simple Favor,” Lively lets her inner mean girl out, and it’s so effortless that you sorta feel duped, like a carnival midway mark. Of course, she’s always been super-cool; she’s not just sweet. What was I thinking?
One feels a bit used and stupid. It’s a good lesson in not letting yourself get enraptured with other men’s wives.
I am likewise enamored of Anna Kendrick. She’s just cute-cute-cute and sweet all the time and doesn’t have an ounce of meanness in her, ever, at any time. This is my belief. If they make a movie where she’s convincingly mean, I’ll need to find another profession; I won’t be able to do this job anymore.
Anna Kendrick as Mommy Vlogger
Like Mila Kunis’s overachieving, spread-too-thin mom in “Bad Moms,” Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie is a single mom with a home-ec type video blog. She eventually meets Emily (Lively), a world-weary, louche, blithely snide, stiletto-strutting, Manhattan-based professional fashionista.The tone and quintessence of their future friendship are set on their first encounter. Their boys clamor for a play date, which Stephanie thinks is awesome, and Emily candidly snarks, “Uh, no—I already have a play date with a symphony of antidepressants.”
They end up bonding over martinis in Emily’s ultra-chic Connecticut home. (It must be noted that Lively herewith does some sly product placement for hubby Reynolds’s new line of Aviation Gin.)
Stephanie is impressed with Emily‘s ridiculously passionate marriage to Sean (Henry Golding of “Crazy Rich Asians”) and take-no-prisoners attitude. Emily, it would seem, likes Stephanie’s sweetness and nurturing. And people-pleasing.
Because Emily soon starts taking advantage of Stephanie—having her pick up her kid, and so on—and when Emily disappears one day, Stephanie’s caught up in holding down Emily’s fort until she reappears.
A modicum of seriousness sets in when law enforcement gets involved, and the plot railroads into whodunit territory, with Stephanie accessing her inner Nancy Drew.
Plot Convolutedness
“A Simple Favor,” about a female friendship gone wrong, is equal parts relationship thriller, crime comedy, and raunchy, guilty pleasure. The subject matter is not, per se, funny, but it’s written for laughs and is off-the-charts plot-twisty.
What’s raunchy? Well for one, suffice it to say, as sweet as Stephanie is, her half-brother and husband, while having a man-to-man talk in a black Camaro doing 90 on the highway, both died in a car crash. What might they have been discussing? Well, let’s just say there was a question as to who Stephanie’s kid’s father is.
Kendrick’s a perennially perky little sunburst of fun, with acting nuances on top of her acting nuances. Lively’s a screen siren. Enough said. But do we care about them? We care more about Stephanie than Emily, for sure. However, her character segues into slightly farcical territory at the end, as does the entire film. It’s ultimately fluff. But it’s quite good fluff.
