I never saw A Simple Favor when it was first released in 2018. Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick aren’t big draws for me. I know I have biases. I still haven’t watched it, but I thought, hey, let me go to the screening for the sequel Another Simple Favor. See, I thought this was like heavy melodrama, but when I was sitting and watching this new one, I was like – is this a millennial Murder She Wrote, and why did no one tell me this? I love me some Murder She Wrote. So when the movie opens with Kendrick’s Stephanie Smothers in her suburban town doing small-town America stuff while also promoting her book, and then a mystery pops off, connecting directly to what happened in the last movie, I was generally interested.
Stephanie is surrounded by her friend Darren, played by the always funny and charming Andrew Rannells, and her Vicky (Alex Newell), her literary agent who’s always trying to find ways to sell more books. Once Blake Lively’s Emily pops back into Stephanie’s life, asking her to be her Maid of Honor at her wedding in Capri, Italy, Stephanie is wary but curious as to why her former good friend turned killer that she put away wants her at her wedding.
So, like many movies with sequels, you now have a nice, easy-going comedy-mystery set in a wonderful setting in a beautiful locale in Europe. You can never go wrong with filming a movie in a fabulous European island setting; old architecture and beautiful water is very entertaining to see on screen.
The whole plot of Emily getting married to this handsome Italian mystery man Dante Versano (Michele Morrone), with his family hating her along with another rival family also distrustful of this union, is a good bed to put a nice new mystery for Stephanie to solve with all the sarcastic quips and wild characters that at least for me I didn’t expect to see in this movie. I think Lively was different than I usually see her and had me acknowledge her acting ability more than I have before. She was good.
Henry Golding as Sean Townsend, Emily’s ex-husband, who in this movie is angry and drunk the whole time, just throwing darts at everyone and doesn’t care where he is, was funny. Having Stephanie and Emily be so focused on their kids is very momcore stuff. Stephanie’s kid C plot is boring. Her kid is annoying and doesn’t help the movie at all. Allison Janney, as Aunt Linda McLinden, even with kind of coasting in this, is still an engaging actor.
This movie has enough kills, twists, and turns that make it fun and something worth watching on Prime Video. I think Another Simple Favor will be liked by the fans of the first, and it was able to make me give this a shot when they eventually make more of these.
Score: C+
