Feig’s Favor to you: A twisty, stylish picture with a sly sense of humor
“Secrets are like margarine: easy to spread; bad for the heart,” muses perky mommy vlogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) in director Paul Feig’s new film A Simple Favor, and does that ever prove to be a prophetic understatement. Feig, best known for helming the comedies Bridesmaids and The Heat, brings a breezy, stylized light touch to the film adaptation of Darcey Bell’s 2017 debut mystery thriller of the same name. The result is a mostly successful mash up of black comedy and icy noir that, despite similarities to better films, still manages to be a wickedly fun good time.
When Bell’s book first hit, it was rightfully compared to both Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. The film version, too, with a script by screenwriter Jessica Sharzer of American Horror Story, resembles those stories in terms of plot, but Sharzer and Feig create a tone that is more satiric and less menacing. Like those earlier works, Feig’s picture often has a strong Hitchcockian vibe, but with an updated, 21st century, Big Little Lies kind of feel.
Similar to that recent HBO miniseries, A Simple Favor concerns restless mommies in a wealthy, judgmental community; here, suburban Connecticut replaces Monterey (Andrew Rannells, Aparna Nancherla, and Kelly McCormack provide the catty but amusing Greek chorus of fellow first-grader parents). Kendrick’s Stephanie is our entrance into this world; a young widow, she’s a stay-at-home mom to son Miles (Joshua Satine), is the first to volunteer for every school event (Bad Moms is also echoed in some of these school scenes), and hosts an earnest mommy vlog that tackles recipes, crafts, and parenting advice.
When young Miles wants a play date with Nicky (Ian Ho), son of glamorous working mom Emily (Blake Lively, looking especially elegant in costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus’s carefully curated outfits), Stephanie and Emily bond over martinis, despite their seemingly glaring differences. Emily is a PR exec in Manhattan for a pretentious fashion designer, and is married to the handsome writer and professor Sean (Henry Golding of Crazy Rich Asians fame). Eager, people-pleasing Stephanie is quick to proclaim Emily her new “best friend,” and so when Emily asks her for the “simple favor” of the title — to pick up Nicky from school — Stephanie readily agrees.
Of course the irony is that the favor proves not to be so simple; Emily never returns to claim Nicky, and a worried Stephanie, with Sean’s help, launches into full Nancy Drew mode, trying to find her best friend. At one point Stephanie references the classic noir mystery Diabolique, and viewers should take note: that reference is perhaps the most on point of all the film’s comparisons.
What follows is a mystery packed with more twists and turns than you can count — some you see coming, and many you don’t. Lies about business trips, visits to out-of-state small towns, abandoned rental cars, life insurance policies, odd, spooky coincidences, creaky old houses filled with eccentric relatives, forged identities, chilling headlines on a library microfiche, a no-nonsense, sharp detective, murder, revenge, sex, lies, and long buried secrets — they’re all here, and they all make for great fun, especially if you don’t stop and think about all of it too much. A lot of the twists feel ripped straight out of old daytime soaps from back in their heyday, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; sometimes an escapist, “OMG – No Way!” story is exactly what we need.
Feig and Sharzer have thus not only recognized, but wholeheartedly embraced, this kind of pulpy amusement, and their game cast — especially Kendrick and Lively, who have more chemistry with each other than either does with Golding — bring their roles to life with just the right mixture of camp and malevolence. While at times the picture feels a tad too twisty, its slick, sardonic mood can’t help but engage the viewer, and keep the viewer guessing as to who did what to whom and why. And, really, what more can we ask of that ever classic genre, the black-comedy-mystery-thriller?
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A Simple Favor opens today at Bay Area theaters.
