Another Simple Favor (2025) review

Dir. Paul Feig

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

I called A Simple Favor “the cinematic equivalent of a trashy beach-read” when I saw it in theaters many, many moons ago (2018), and I still stand by every word. It wasn’t a dig. It was a compliment for a film that nailed its various tones, from snarky humor to lurid escapism. Its sequel, Another Simple Favor, which arrives on streaming instead of the silver-screen, is cinematic wallpaper. It looks gorgeous, it’s good for a few amusing moments, but it’s also the kind of overlong, sporadically compelling picture that fits perfectly on streaming where it’s destined to hold most (but not all) of your attention.

Another Simple Favor pulls the predictable sequel move when the plot-thread for a follow-up isn’t readily clear. It plucks its characters from their setting (Connecticut) and places them somewhere gorgeous and opulent (Capri). Indeed, Paul Feig — working off a script by writers Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis — takes some inspiration from European comedies and folksy American films from the 1930s and 1940s where problems can be solved and love can be found with a simple excursion across the pond. Once you see how beautiful the waters of Capri look, even on your TV screen, you realize there are worst places this could’ve went.

In the early minutes, we rekindle with Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) five years after the events of the first film. She’s suspiciously still on her book tour, but sales are slumping, so a sequel is ideal, per her publicist, Vicky (Alex Newell). A potential plot rears itself when Emily (Blake Lively) reenters Stephanie’s life, and fills her in on her happenings since appealing her prison sentence. Emily wants Stephanie as the Maid of Honor at her wedding to her childhood friend, a hunky mob boss named Dante Versano (Michele Morrone), who works under his mother (Elena Sofia Ricci).

She convinces Stephanie to fly to Capri, where the mom vlogger will of course document her happenings via social media just in case she ends up dead (kidding, kind of, hopefully). Present at the wedding is Emily’s ex-husband, Sean (Henry Golding), who you’ll remember enjoyed some serious quality time with Stephanie, which leads to one-too-many “husband-fucker” insults from Emily, and their son, Nicky (Ian Ho).

Also in attendance is Emily’s mother Margaret (Elizabeth Perkins, replacing Jean Smart) as well as her Aunt Linda (Allison Janney). Something is amiss. Than someone suspiciously dies, leading Stephanie to remind herself that she never should’ve trusted Emily in the first place.

Another Simple Favor has a great deal going on, but truth be told, it’s at its best when it allows for Kendrick and Lively to share the screen. As was the case with the original, the film crackles with uncomfortable humor and palpable tension when the two share the screen. This time around, we’re predisposed not to trust Emily, so the element of surprise is gone when she starts pulling fast ones. Like most M. Night Shyamalan films, we keep waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under us, to the point that when the bottom drops, we’re critiquing the fall because we expected a bigger drop.

The third act is highly chaotic. As soon as an unexpected/retconned third character is introduced, the film gets lost in its own labyrinth of twists. The comforting detail with a film that has at least three ongoing plot-threads dangling at any given time is that Another Simple Favor doesn’t need to rely on its payoff to be successful. There’s the aforementioned chemistry between Lively and Kendrick; there’s the sights and sounds of Capri, which is photographed lovingly by John Schwartzman; there’s also another lively soundtrack that includes a fine amount of French pop, ala the original. Oh, and the costumes are practically characters in themselves; at one point, Blake Lively dons a hat as big as Jean Jacket in Jordan Peele’s Nope.

Another Simple Favor dilutes some of what made A Simple Favor so virile and exciting by striving for bigger stakes. Instead of Stephanie’s documentation of motherhood being one of the focal points, this time it’s her sudden involvement with the Italian mob and two warring families. Instead of the catty interplay of the two leads being at the forefront, they’re placed atop a cliffside paradise, and one or more characters has no problem seeing them take the “Tiberius Leap.” Should this be Paul Feig’s franchise that Ghostbusters wasn’t, the inevitable third film should truly be a much simpler favor insofar that it draws on its most insatiable ingredient: the twofer of Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively.

My review of A Simple Favor

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Elizabeth Perkins, Allison Janney, Michele Morrone, Elena Sofia Ricci, Alex Newell, Henry Golding, and Ian Ho. Directed by: Paul Feig.