Dir: Paul Feig, 2018
Paul Feig movies tend to be a hit and miss affair. To be honest, the misses heavily outweigh the hits. And, to be brutally frank, the hits aren’t really hits. They’re just mediocre time fillers.
But, inevitably, at some point in his career, the director will score a bullseye and that time has come. A Simple Favor (or Favour, if you’re in one of the correct spelling countries) is Feig’s maturation to accomplished and deft filmmaker. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty much a given that he’ll end up using Jennifer Lawrence in a film. Fingers crossed, he won’t be scraping that barrel for a good while yet.
Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) is a single mother and vlogger. A chance meeting with the mum of her son’s friend, Stephanie strikes up a close relationship with Emily Nelson (Blake Lively); a high flying executive at fashion company.
However, Emily disappears and Stephanie takes it upon herself to investigate, while falling in love with Emily’s husband. But, Stephanie soon gets caught up in the mysteries and lies that envelop Emily’s life.
Mystery films can be incredibly difficult to pull off. You run the risk of making things blatantly obvious, or failing to keep you engrossed with their many twists and turns but Feig succeeds spectacularly, keeping you guessing as to what’s going to happen next.
Unsurprisingly, Anna Kendrick is brilliant in the role of lonely and timid Stephanie. Kendrick has a unique star personality of kooky with an endearing innocence; much like Zooey Deschanel.
Equally as good is Blake Lively as the troubled Emily. Switching between closeness and aloofness, kindness and barbarity, Lively perfectly embodies the power dressing, stylish and go getting bitch who seems to be one step short of being an alcoholic. Sipping on Martinis and firing vulgarities like they were going out of fashion, Lively is deliciously sexy and over the top in her performance, maybe even stealing the film from under the nose of Kendrick.
It’s clear that Paul Feig has a real talent, and rather than wasting his time with Melissa Mccarthy films, he should be focusing on works that he can really get his teeth into like this.
A Simple Favor is intriguing from start to finish and is one of 2018’s best movies that everyone should see.
9/10
Movie Truth 