Another Simple Favor
AMAZON PRIME
A sequel to the lukewarm and somewhat forgotten murder mystery A Simple Favor from director Paul Feig, as an Amazon Prime Studios Original, was not on the 2025 bucket list. Feig returns behind the camera after the god-awful and virtually unseen Jackpot! (It is genuinely utter poison.) And the equally bizarre and dire The School for Good and Evil, it would seem that Feig needs a hit, and with the release of Another Simple Favor, he's going to have to wait a little while longer.
To its credit, for the target audience of people who like smutty, sensual and taboo types of reading literature (which is literally what this is based on with its predecessor), will undoubtedly find something here in entertainment value of both the aforementioned themes and the ludicrous nature of the beast. Granted, this goes to the utter extreme of smutty nonsense, but not in the manner of Fifty Shades of Grey, which has a smidge of sensuality but more so the genuinely outrageous and silly spectacle of the likes of incest and sexual assault all mixed around the notion of murder. Surprisingly, the more the narrative here wants to be excessive and utilise the ridiculous of its twists and turns, it all becomes more and more predictable. It’s an interesting paradox of sorts in that each time it wants to become sporadic, it perhaps unknowingly forces itself down fewer and fewer avenues, leading to both the inevitable and obvious.
The twists and turns in question are just horrible to witness. They hold little to no weight aside from faux-outrage and shock value. Having to outdo the incestuous sub-plot of its predecessor, Another Simple Favor doubles down with a story arc that is so silly and desperate to instil a reaction from its audience, all the while failing to write and craft an immersive experience surrounding it. Strangely, and somewhat ironically, utilising said narrative arc will ultimately come to define and speak for this film as a whole, which in turn begs the question if the creatives are intending for this to be a spike in the social media campaign for audiences that would suggest the film as a whole has absolutely nothing else to say or speak for. Another Simple Favor looks equally atrocious and baffling. For a feature to narratively be set in the region of glorious Italy, only to be prominently shot on horrid and obvious uses of green screen backgrounds, is not only counterintuitive but vapid. The life and soul, as well as the texture of sweltering heat, culture and sensuality of an intoxicating setting, is simply lost in the terrible and abhorrent lack of style and cinematic language that Feig has as a director. The sheer lack of style and visual language is such an unforgivable sin that it begs the question if Feig has ever made remotely one frame of cinema that has an ounce of artistic depth or creative endeavour. Yes, the costume design is often terrific, but slapping a filter upon the image to boost the feeling of a Mediterranean vibe and feeling without actively wanting to invest such a sentiment in a creative manner is tragic.
All the while dragging on for an excruciating two hours that in turn intensifies the horrible experience tenfold with a narrative that is disinteresting and depressing to witness. Once the viewer withstands the shock value, little is left to find entertaining on a narrative or visual level. That being said, thankfully, Blake Lively is involved and puts forward a great, deranged performance with such capability and charisma. The arc and performance quite brilliantly is on a knife edge of the unpredictable, of nice meets nasty, and Lively excels in that very beast of a sensual and sexual femme fatale, looking drop dead gorgeous yet dangerous at every word that is a little more watered down from the predecessor but still retains intoxicating energy. Unfortunately, it’s just a damn shame that this performance is in something like Another Simple Favor and not something on the level or craft as Gone Girl with a creative hierarchy such as David Fincher able to mould the piece to a sharper, more consistent and thus terrifying piece of tissue. As is, Lively and her performance are stuck and suffocated in a non-evolving or non-partisan environment that is not willing, unable or incapable of finding another level of creative outlet.
