So that’s exciting.ĭo yourself a simple favor – Don’t waste your time with this dumb movie. We do have TWO Connecticut stereotypes here though – the vanilla Martha Stewart wannabe suburban mom and the super rich blonde high society woman. It’s all really dumb, despite good actors all around. This movie tries to be a comedy and a thriller and a murder mystery. Something something about a big insurance policy and she’s found alive in Michigan and a twin sister and faked deaths and Kendrick sleeps with the handsome husband and a fake murder and cops and arrests and anguish and Kendrick ends up married to handsome husband and this paragraph is indicative of how the movie’s last 20 minutes is. Vlogger mommy sets out to solve the mystery, with trips to the Manhattan office and internet sleuthing, she discovers some dark secrets. There’s no point to this… but the house and Lively are both beautiful, so there’s some redeeming qualities here for me. The boys want a playdate, so Kendrick and Lively are sort of forced to be friends.Īnd lo! They become friends! And there’s a super handsome husband! And it turns out their house and apparent wealth are a facade! Then Blake Lively disappears! The handsome husband is away in London and now Kendrick has to care for their son. That son is friends with another kid who is the son of Blake Lively – a beautiful, uppity, wealthy fashion executive in the City. And as a result, neither do I.Īnna Kendrick is a mommy vlogger doing her thing to a small audience while being the perfect mom to her kindergarten son.
The problem with A Simple Favor is it doesn’t know what it is. Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec… so he knows what he’s doing for the most part. This movie is a mess.ĭirected by Paul Feig, who has done some stellar comedic work.
That has no bearing on anything, but I thought I’d mention it because they dine in New Canaan and other nearby towns. And Anna Kendrick’s goody two-shoes character lives in the middle class part of New Canaan.īlake Lively lives with Ryan Reynolds in nearby Pound Ridge, NY. We can imagine that Blake Lively’s character and her husband live on the same street as The Ice Storm people. While the movie wasn’t filmed in Connecticut, we can play that game again of “guess where this movie would take place if they named a place?” It stars Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Linda Cardellini, Rupert Friend, and Jean Smart and. Its screenplay by Jessica Sharzer is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Darcey Bell. Here we are… another movie set in Fairfield County and another impossibly gorgeous modern house. Freaks and Geeks (19992000) Other Space (2015) A Simple Favor is a 2018 American crime comedy thriller film directed by Paul Feig.
Although A Simple Favor contains definite trappings of an airport page-turner – two young mothers (Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively) become fast friends before one of them disappears from the face of the Earth – its mystery elements are infused with a uniquely Feig-ian sensibility, equal parts broad comedy and ironic winks. Would this be the director’s new approach, perhaps after having been burned by trolls for his (legitimately underappreciated) Ghostbusters reboot? Yes, and no. So when the trailer for Feig’s new movie, A Simple Favor, was released earlier this spring promising a Gone Girl-style thriller, dedicated Feig-heads (guilty!) were perplexed. Director Paul Feig is best known for such female-fronted comedies as Bridesmaids and Spy (and for his collaborations with Judd Apatow, such as television’s forever-mourned Freaks and Geeks).