This is the first film in a little while that I have gone into pretty much blind, and right off the bat it's something I should probably do more often. With no expectations and no pre-conceived ideas or notions about the film I bought my ticket and sat myself down, unaware of the kind of film I would be watching. Now, to be fair, I had seen the trailer for this film once few weeks ago, but I remembered almost nothing about it, with my main memory of it being that I had seen it and that it seemed like a thriller from my broken memory of it. Then the opening credits came on and I saw that the film was directed by Paul Feig, the director of Bridesmaids (2011), The Heat (2013) and Spy (2015). This was a revelation I was not expecting from the film, as I was under the impression it was some sort of thriller and now I was being told that the director was Paul Feig, a man whose directing credits are all straight up comedies. I haven't seen any of Feig's other films, so this was not a problem, but it was a confusing revelation. Regardless I was still pretty much in the dark about the film and so I sat back and watched. This film was a pleasant surprise. I was entertained throughout, and it was both intriguing and, as you may expect from Feig, funny. The story follows Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), a single Mum with her own vlog, who one day after school is invited back to the house of the mysterious Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) so that their children can have a play date. Despite being very different people Stephanie becomes somewhat infatuated by Emily and they soon strike up a kinship, with Stephanie going so far to believe Emily is her best friend. Soon after, Emily rings Stephanie in a frenzy at work and asks her if she can pick up her son after school. Stephanie agrees and complies, but Emily does not arrive to pick up her son. After two days Stephanie and Emily's husband, Sean Townsend (Henry Golding), are concerned enough that they inform the police. The rest of the film follows Stephanie as she attempts to find where Emily has disappeared too, and in doing so finds out that she may not know Emily as well as she thought.
The reason this film succeeds in is in the performances of its two leads, Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. Lively is very good as Emily, playing a character who is hard to dislike despite being dislikeable, which is exactly how the character should be. She is crude, stylish, smart, dangerous and mysterious all whilst staying likeable and intriguing, and like all the characters in the film, we as an audience are drawn in to her. The secondary players in the film are also good, especially the other parents at the school who get the best bits of comedic dialogue in the film, especially Andrew Rannells who plays Darren who got the biggest laughs in the film despite being in it only fleetingly. But Kendrick is the true MVP in the film. She is brilliant at playing a charming but awkward single mum who gets dragged in to a world that she does not belong in, at least at first. She does a great job at showing how this character goes from the innocent and almost socially inept person we see at the beginning of the film to being a strong and slightly psychotic character towards the end, all the while staying very likeable and having us as an audience route for her. The story and script help in this matter as all the characters are written well and the story is entertaining and intriguing, so you are always wanting to learn more about these characters and see them grow as the story progresses. The performances of Lively and Kendrick help the story along brilliantly and if it wasn't for them this film would lose a lot of its charm. The performances are also good enough that they paper over some of the cracks in the film, and there are a few pretty big cracks.
As the title suggests the film's story is similar to that of Gone Girl (2014) but there are enough differences to make it stand out on its own, but there are some plot points that are eerily similar. Like Gone Girl, the film is based on a novel of the same name by Darcey Bell, and this comes with its own problems, mainly being that the film seems to rush the ending. With a book you can make the story as long as you'd like, but a film has time constraints. I think the film has a runtime where it doesn’t get boring, clocking in at 1 hour and 57 minutes, but this does come at the cost of a rushed ending. But the main problem I have with the film is the tone. Paul Feig is a comedy director and so the comedy in the film is good and it got some laughs, and a lot of the time it was put in places where it fit with the tone of the scene. However, there are glaringly poor tone changes at certain points during the film. The film is a thriller at its bare bones and it does take up the serious tone of a thriller throughout most of it, throwing little comedic moments in here and there. But there are rimes where the serious tone is thrown into obvious comedic moments within seconds, a huge tonal shift that can be jarring. I feel like Feig did this purposely, with the aim being to get big laugh due to the jarring nature of the comedy, but for me I don't think it worked all that well. One of the ending scenes of the film is the most egregious moment of this, and genuinely had me thinking "Well that was fucking stupid".
A Simple Favor is a stylish, fun and entertaining film with good performances and story that keeps you intrigued and guessing right until the end. But it does have a problem with tone or, at the very least, the attempt to make the tonal shifts so jarring that they get big laughs fall flat. But the performances of Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively are the real show stealers of the film and push it above being just okay to being good. Their performances never lose you and always keep you wanting to see more and that’s all you can really ask of an actor. Is this a film I see myself going back to? Probably not. Is it a film you need to see on the big screen? Not really. But do I recommend that you see the film? Yes. Yes, I do.