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A SIMPLE FAVOR
Director: Paul Feig Cast: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Ian Ho, Joshua Satine, Rupert Friend, Linda Cardellini, Jean Smart, Bashir Salahuddin, Aparna Nancherla, Braganza, Kelly McCormack, Dustin Milligan MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:57 Release Date: 9/14/18 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 13, 2018 The first act of A Simple Favor is a biting satire of suburban life, with the constant gossip, the secrets of its inhabitants, the crushing expectations of trying to live up to one's neighbors, and the realization that pretty much everyone is putting on a mask of some sort. Right out of the gate, the screenplay by Jessica Sharzer (based on Darcey Bell's novel) lets us know that this is a mystery story, too—about a wife and mother who has gone missing for multiple days. We're invested enough in the movie's dissection of the façade of suburban normalcy that we start looking for clues and hints of potential foul play immediately. Even if a lot of it amounts to a school of red herrings, there's still something fascinating about watching the dark secrets of the seemingly happy and/or successful come to light. There are intriguing characters here, from Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), a single mother and widow who runs a website offering advice to busy mothers in video form, to Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), the woman who disappears but whose true nature becomes an even greater mystery in her absence. The two women had been best friends before Emily went missing. At least that's Stephanie's story. She relates her side of things during one of her videos, which catches up her audience and, hence, us to what has occurred. Stephanie seems perfectly normal, if a little overeager (She volunteers for multiple tasks for a function at her son's school) and desperate for companionship. Sharzer and director Paul Feig use the extended flashback to give us the specifics of Emily's disappearance: She called Stephanie to pick up her son from school and never came back home. It also, though, tells us a lot about these two women and even a little bit about Emily's husband Sean Townsend (Henry Golding), a writer who hasn't written a thing since his first novel became a sensation. He's the obvious suspect in his wife's disappearance, of course, and while he definitely appears to have a motive, we can't stop thinking about Stephanie. She seems to latch on to Emily a little too quickly, and there's the gossip going around town that Emily is only using Stephanie as a volunteer nanny. Then there's the strange coincidence of the simultaneous deaths of her husband and her half-brother, whose relationship with Stephanie is a dark secret that only Emily seems able to see. In other words, the movie begins as a fine mystery and quickly reveals itself to be a finer study of repression and overcompensation. It's very much a story about gender roles, with Stephanie trying to act like the perfect single mother, who can do everything and is very sorry if she messes up in even the slightest way, and Emily, who seems quite capable of doing just about anything and makes no apologies for it, as her foil. Playing a confessional game, Emily quickly reveals that she and Sean recently had a threesome with another woman, while Stephanie takes such a long pause in the story of first meeting her half-brother that Emily figures out the scene that we see playing inside Stephanie's head. All of this seems to be going in one direction, as a body is (almost too conveniently) found and Stephanie easily moves into the role of housewife in Sean's lush home. It seems so simple that the movie itself appears to be joking about that fact, in the form of the detective in charge of investigating Emily's disappearance, played with sly, knowing wit by Bashir Salahuddin. Is it odd to criticize a mystery for not going with the obvious answer? It likely is, but here, it also might be appropriate. Without giving too much away, the obvious answers are soon dismissed for a far more convoluted one, involving a series of sightings of an allegedly dead person and a dive into Emily's past. Stephanie shifts from a woman with a string of secrets and hang-ups (Kendrick is spot-on with her performance, making us wonder how much of it is the character's own performance) to an amateur sleuth, going from place to place, questioning people who knew Emily, and still making her online videos—although she has a single audience member in mind with them. As the pieces of the puzzle come together, the more successful and subversive elements of the story come apart. The movie loses its focus on these characters, opting for a series of complex revelations and games. It becomes much less about Stephanie and more about the mystery of Emily, whose character becomes less complicated, even as the motives behind her actions hint at something more. Even though it becomes more specific in the assorted games being played, the whole movie becomes broader in its approach. It loses sight of these characters, who transform into pawns in some elaborate schemes (Various characters team up—or pretend to do so—to get what they want—or make it appear as such—until it's never quite clear why anyone is doing what they're doing). A Simple Favor stops having fun with its characters, their ways of life, and the conflicts between and within themselves, believing instead that the real fun is in concocting a string of twists and tricks. It's not. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for sexual content and language throughout, some graphic nude images,
drug use and violence)
