Thursday, September 27, 2018

Film Review - A Simple Favor (2018)

A Simple Favor is the new film by Paul Feig who made Spy and Ghostbusters and stars Anna Kendrick as Stephanie a mummy vlogger who makes friends with a woman named Emily (Blake Lively) and her husband (Henry Golding) but when Emily disappears Stephanie starts to suspect something is wrong so she decides to investigate her disappearance while also comforting her abandoned family.

A Simple Favor works best when Anna Kendrick is allowed to be the private detective so to speak and that element of the story is a lot of fun to watch as we rarely get a well made detective story on film nowadays most often they go to television now and it’s a real shame as a good mystery is always worthwhile on screen as you sit with an audience to discover the clues and guess who the killer is and then watch when all is revealed and you can piece it all together and Kendrick who was also very good in the Accountant in 2016 is good here as well.

As for Ms Lively she simply oozes sex appeal here with her sharp suits and statuesque posture in Mr Feig’s hand and on a couple of occasions she reminded me of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct the beautiful blonde with a mysterious story that keeps our lead guessing for the truth, she also has some really nice suits and a fuck it all attitude that sees Ms Lively really shine as an actress and she has been hit and miss for me but here like in the underrated Age of Adaline in 2015 she was quite good here.

And lastly Mr Golding hot off the success of Crazy Rich Asians is good here as well as the concerned husband who worries about his missing wife and caring for his son Nicky though I will say he does not have as much screen time as Ms Lively and Ms Kendrick do.

Where the film does fall over somewhat is that at times the central mystery gets a little too silly for its own good and while seeing it all come together is very satisfying it does during the course of the storytelling become a little too silly in a way that made me think “Okay how does this make any sense” but again it dances that fine line well enough in the end that I don’t really mind all that much.

And so that was a Simple Favor which is a fun detective story with great performances at the centre of it that make it worth watching, 3 and a half out of 5.

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