Review: 'Another Simple Favor' brings Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively back for martinis and murder, but the mix of comedy and blood doesn't sparkle this time
There’s a lot I will tolerate in order to watch Anna Kendrick having fun as she tears into a comedic role — and there’s a lot one must tolerate surrounding Kendrick in “Another Simple Favor,” a mishmash of martini-swigging comedy and bloody murder mystery that doesn’t quite get the recipe right.
Director Paul Feig got that balance perfect in 2018’s “A Simple Favor,” in which Kendrick played Stephanie Smothers, suburban mom and baking vlogger — now we’d say “influencer,” I suppose — who becomes fascinated with a sophisticated new mom at her son’s school, Emily (Blake Lively). When Emily disappears, Stephanie became neighborhood sleuth, though she took time out for a romp in the sheets with Emily’s novelist husband, Sean (Henry Golding).
You may remember — and if you didn’t, I’m about to spoil a 7-year-old movie — that Emily faked her own death by killing her secret twin sister. And she would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling Stephanie.
The new movie starts with Stephanie, who has graduated online from baking videos to true-crime case-solving, at a bookstore reading for her first book — which is all about her strange encounter with Emily. Who should walk in to the reading but the recently sprung-from-prison Emily. Stephanie fears Emily is seeking revenge, but her request is even more unsettling: Emily wants Stephanie to be her maid of honor at her destination wedding in Capri.
Stephanie takes the trip, still suspicious of Emily – but soon discovering there’s a lot more she should be suspicious about. Like the fact that Emily’s fiancé, Dante (Michele Morrone), is apparently part of the Mafia, and that the family’s matriarch, Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci), vocally despises her prospective daughter-in-law. Or the fact that Emily’s estranged mom (Elizabeth Perkins) shows up, seemingly in the throes of dementia, accompanied by Emily’s previously unseen Aunt, Linda (Allison Janney), who’s way too nice to be real. Or the fact that her son, Nicky (Ian Ho), is being chaperoned by Emily’s now ex-husband, Sean, who’s frequently soused.
With all this animosity brewing under the Mediterranean sun, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the movie’s first murder isn’t too far away. But who? And why? That’s what Stephanie wants to figure out — in part because the incompetent Caprese police detective in charge (Max Malatesta) thinks she’s the killer.
The script, by Jessica Sharzer — who adapted Darcey Bell’s novel for the first movie — and Laeta Kalogridis (“Alita: Battle Angel”), doesn’t have the same heady fizz of its predecessor. Emily’s sinister banter has more of a nasty edge, without being as smart. And the writers rely too much on chemical enhancement (gin in one scene, truth serum in another) to make Stephanie artificially ditzy for comical effect.
Kendrick and Lively are clearly enjoying their characters’ love-hate relationship, and both performers get some nice moments where both Emily and Stephanie think they’ve got everything figured out. But if one person involved in this movie has nailed the assignment, it’s costume designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus, another crew member returning from the first movie, who finds gorgeous couture — especially for Lively — that is both drop-dead sexy and hilariously too much.
For most of the movie, I was on the fence about whether I was enjoying it. Then there’s a big twist at the end — which is both outlandish and tiresomely predictable, and shows how desperate everyone involved was to figure out the secret sauce that made the first movie so enjoyable. That twist knocked me off the fence and into the “no” camp, in spite of Kendrick’s charms.
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‘Another Simple Favor’
★★1/2
Available Thursday, May 1, streaming on Prime. Rated R for violence, sexual content, nudity, language throughout, and suicide. Running time: 120 minutes.