Another Simple Favor (2025)
Another Simple Favor (2025)
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While watching Paul Feig's "Another Simple Favor," I'm probably the only person who will think of a family film franchise from the 1970s. I had a flashback to "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" when the convoluted hijinks of the follow-up to 2018's "A Simple Favor" were at their peak. Young readers, there was a time when sequels more frequently took their beloved characters overseas for wacky adventures. Movies like that took what people liked and then just transported them to some of the most beautiful places in the world. Love the sleaze and glamour of Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in the original? Now just picture them in Capri!
That kind of travelogue approach to sequel storytelling actually does give “Another Simple Favor” a very different energy, shifting from the friends-or-enemies balance of the first film to something a bit closer to a zany European comedy with tinges of Giallo. Even though the topic shifts from motherhood to the mafia, "Another Simple Favor" ultimately stays largely the same in terms of what works and what doesn't. The costumes are stunning, rising to the level of the stunning scenery, and Lively is once again fantastic, imbuing this character with a degree of captivating uncertainty that disturbs the film's balance when she is not on screen. Additionally, when the film needs to build, the plot and pacing frequently lag behind. Another film with a lot of twists that works better when the characters are just allowed to be amazing rather than mysterious.
Five years after the events of the first film, "Another Simple Favor" revisits Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick). She is still touring in some way in support of her book, but her sales are falling, and she could use a sequel. When Emily (Lively) returns to Stephanie's life, that door opens. Emily insists that Stephanie serve as her Maid of Honor, and her fiancé's high-priced attorneys were successful in getting her out of prison on appeal. Wedding at a destination! The couple takes a flight to Capri, where they are joined by Sean (Henry Golding), who has been ordered by the courts to bring Nicky (Ian Ho) to the ceremony. Golding has some of the best lines in the first act, when Sean insults his ex-lovers while still drunk. The groom is a hunk named Dante (Michele Morrone), who happens to be the heir to a mafia empire run by his mother Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci), who is reluctantly navigating a conflict between the Versano family and a competing one at the ceremony. If you're curious, Stephanie points out that Diane Keaton didn't do well in "The Godfather."
This time, Allison Janney as Emily's Aunt Linda and the great Elizabeth Perkins as Emily's mother Margaret (a recasting from Jean Smart in the original, who is dismissed with a clever line about having work done) join the chaos. Janney embraces Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis' soapy and twisty tone, as she always does, and fits right in.
"Another Simple Favor," like many European comedies, frequently has the impression of being multiple films competing for space. The best one features Kendrick and Lively, who have successfully altered their chemistry this time around. Stephanie is more concerned that Emily will attempt to kill her again and is no longer captivated by this glamorous woman who has entered her normal world. As she is forced to go places that fans won't be able to predict, Lively gives one of her best performances to date by leaning into what we already know about the character. Like the first film, the plotting forces Lively out of the action for too long, and you can feel the impact—all of the best scenes in the film work because of how Kendrick and Lively work off each other rather than what they’re doing individually.
Janney and Perkins are fun, but most of the new additions are mediocre. Morrone is a charismatic performer who gets little screen time. Ricci actually ends up with way more screen time, and her character becomes the biggest drag on the pacing. Nothing done by the mafia works. We want soapy twists about faked deaths and family secrets—we don’t care about a pending mob war. And it’s in these scenes that Feig’s issues with pacing surface again. There’s no reason for this to be two hours, and you can feel where it could have been tightened. A late-film truth serum scene should have been a third as long, for example. A movie with a lot of twists like this one needs to build up the pace so that we don't have to think about whether or not the revelations make sense.
On that note, when one thinks back on the story of “Another Simple Favor,” it’s absolutely ludicrous. Therefore, perhaps it is a success that the majority of viewers can ignore the absurdity because it provides just enough escapist amusement. The flaws fade away when Lively and Kendrick click or when Renee Ehrlich Kalfus's costume design is given the spotlight. Her wedding dress alone should earn her an Oscar nomination, and a few other Lively outfits produced audible, deserved gasps. If you've ever been to a place as memorable as Capri, you know that their stunning beauty tends to forget about problems in the real world. Despite its struggles in places, I was hopeful by the end that Stephanie and Emily would return more quickly than the 7 years between films this time. Someone should start writing “A Simple Favor Goes Bananas.”
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