A Simple Favour is a stylish and unabashedly campy suburban noir that, despite solid performances from stars Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively and a promising opening half, eventually fizzles out into a convoluted muddle of clichés.
Based on a novel by American author Darcey Bell and helmed by director Paul Feig, the film centres around the playfully named Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), an effervescent and delightfully awkward single mother who runs a successful online “mummy” vlogging channel. When Stephanie’s self-professed “best-friend”, Emily (Blake Lively), a chic and enigmatic femme-fatale, disappears without explanation after asking Stephanie to collect her son (Ian Ho) from school, Stephanie takes it upon herself to solve the mystery of her disappearance, updating her legion of online followers on developments in the case, whilst also appealing to them for help along the way.
The film, while overtly influenced by the success of recent thrillers such as Gone Girl, is thankfully self-aware and clever enough to not strive for cheap imitation. It instead sets out to carve its own particular comedy inflected thriller niche, that fortunately couldn’t be accused of taking itself too seriously, for the most part. This approach works to the film’s favour in the beginning, helping to establish the unlikely friendship between the antithetical Stephanie and Emily, in a manner that captures the hilarious, cringe-making fallout between the clashing of their polar opposite worlds.
From the moment an androgynously clad Emily ambles into Stephanie’s point of view in slow motion, we are invited to share in her immediate infatuation with the self-assertive and sensuous Emily. It is unsurprising that Stephanie initially reacts to her imposing presence like a deer caught in headlights, tripping over her words and gazing at her, entranced. We too are dazzled by Lively’s performance in these opening scenes. It would be a remarkably easy feat to become dwarfed by the spacious interiors of Emily’s ultra-modern, chic home, but Lively instead seems to grow in stature within its confines, becoming more irresistible and intriguing despite her character’s persistent foul-mouthed remarks and harshness. Lively deftly manages this delicate balancing act early on, but unfortunately, as Emily’s façade begins to unravel, so too does Lively’s performance, veering on the side of repulsively unlikeable cartoon villain by the time the film grinds to a thoroughly unsatisfactory halt. Lively, to her defence, is unaided by a backstory that does little to invoke empathy her character’s actions, but this nonetheless does not assuage the disappointment at her unconvincing performance in the second half.
It is Kendrick’s performance as the endearingly awkward single mother, come indomitable detective by the film’s close, that ultimately steals the show. Kendrick’s portrayal of Stephanie excels by very gradually and naturally letting her character develop, and by subtly conveying that beneath her veneer of seemingly innate innocence there lies a potential darkness. Initially colourfully dressed like a primary school student on a non-uniform day, her evolution develops through being caught wearing a plunging black dress of Emily’s, which, although played for laughs, does make us begin to question whether or not she herself knows if her motives are truly well-intentioned or subconsciously malicious. Kendrick successfully maintains this ambiguity throughout the duration of the film, particularly in scenes involving Emily’s husband Sean (Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding). This ambiguity, coupled with her unflappable persistence and growing self-confidence, ensures that we are intrigued by her character despite the increasingly woeful twists and turns that the film takes in its latter half.
The film’s first major twist has the potential to be an unforeseen seismic shock in the vein of Janet Leigh’s fate in Hitchcock’s Psycho, but it is ultimately the failure to commit to this potential avenue that marks the beginning of the end for the plausibility of the events that follow. It becomes rapidly clear that this is a film that for all its abundance of style, sleek, and assured direction, especially in the first half, ultimately does not really know where it’s going. The rhythm of the second half is jolty and the twists, turns, and revelations are regrettably just too clichéd to maintain any semblance of genuine concern for what is happening to the characters. By the time the inevitably ridiculous and catastrophic slapstick ending arrives, the film feels like it should have ended twenty minutes before and subsequently the disservice that it does to the rest of the film is minimised, as you really just want to get out of there.
