A Simple Favor
It took five minutes to realize A Simple Favor isn’t meant for me. I’m sure it has its purpose, as does the Chilton repair manual for a 1988 Geo Metro. But I have no fucking clue how to use either. No matter how many times I’ve dreamed of owning a Metro, I could never afford it. Those things are so cherry, especially if all three cylinders work. So all I can do is peruse the Chilton at the library and dream of someday having the opportunity to know what the fuck it’s talking about when it says to replace the ball joint or add R12 to the compressor.
I have never dreamed of having anything from A Simple Favor, a Paul Feig-directed semi-pulp, semi-comedic overbudgeted and over-plotted Lifetime movie full of fancy houses, cars and clothes. Most of the movie looks like the sort of consumption porn from tv networks for stay-at-home moms with programming designed to make them feel like inadequate failures. This movie takes place in the world of home-schooled children where all the moms act like they have their shit together but secretly are a fucking mess mostly worried about what other moms think. Even the supposedly poor woman has a car way fucking nicer than a geo Metro and a pretty fucking nice-looking house.
Anna Kendrick plays Stephanie, a mousy widow with a little cutesy kid in some idyllic community. She does something called “mommy vlogging,” which I assume is a real thing. It’s a way for underutilized moms to show other moms how to be equally underutilized but with a lot of glitter and cookie dough. She wears cat socks from Target and polka dot cardigans.
Fuck, I wish I could afford cat socks from Target, because if I could it would mean I could use that money instead on Benadryl and Keystone Ice. Mrs. Filthy gets my socks at the flea market. Not the new dollar-a-pair tube socks, but from the guy next to that booth. He sells live bait and used underwear. The less elasticity, the lower the price.
Anyway, Blake Lively is Emily, a, boozy, tough-as-nails professional woman who loves afternoon martinis, wearing business jackets with no blouse and picking her kid up from public school in a Porsche. She has a hunky husband, a boss house and more menacing self-confidence than an Eagle Scout with a knife and his first cocaine buzz. Stephanie is cowed by her and envious of her. Emily sees the mousy mom as a dumb, easily manipulated naif and starts leaning on her to watch her kid, do her favors. That is, until the day she disappears.
Where Emily goes and why is the mystery the movie convolutes toward solving. Stephanie becomes a sleuth, and the story becomes a shitload like all those cat-lady or knitting-themed mystery novels that clog library shelves and book clubs (side note: ladies of the Arvada Library, I am not rejoining your stupid club until you all finally agree to read and discuss Rivethead by Ben Hamper).
Mystery novels for the female audience tend to feature an unassuming, seemingly meek heroine who comes into her own and finds her real strength when challenged by a mystery. Suddenly, they go from making birthday cakes for their tabby Mr. Paws to digging through criminal records and facing off against scary killers. And the hunky men notice.
That’s what Stephanie does. Shortly after Emily is declared dead, she’s boning the hubby. This feels mega-creepy but I think in the dumb-ass Lifetime movie world this represents the meek inheriting the earth, or a morally-challenged dude with nice hair. Also, it’s a reminder to the ladies watching in their sweatpants that they are sexual creatures, that sexy dudes are circling out there, waiting for them like Uber drivers near an airport. It’s cheap empowerment horseshit, like Snickers telling people not to be ashamed of their bodies on the wrapper of a king-sized candy bar. The hunk sees who he really should have been with, and a million woman drop the spoon into their non-fat Greek yogurt and applaud.
Stephanie follows Emily’s trail to Michigan, where her body is found drowned in a summer camp lake. Or is it her? No, it’s an estranged identical twin. Of course!
Emily faked her own death, and now she is pissed at Stephanie for fucking her husband. She teases her return with little notes and gifts. That’s not the end of the silly twists, which also include a shut-in mom, the mystery of who burned down their childhood mansion, the creepy caretaker, reading microfiche in a library, the police detective who knows more than he lets on.
The plot twists feel like an unending poo streaming from an ass and piling higher and higher until you worry it’s actually going to bump against you. It’s enough to make me wonder if the movie is intentionally trite, intentionally stacking clichés like a mommy vlogger would coupons at the Krogers. If it were, though, there would be laughs, or at least a wink. Instead, this is when the movie gets serious and the music ramps up to tell us we’re supposed to be worried.
The bad news is the crap cake we got served ain’t over. There’s another fifteen unnecessary minutes when Emily returns and she, Stephanie and the husband take turns faking deaths, secretly recording each other and double crossing to try to flush each other out. It becomes a shitty rollercoaster full of twists just for the sake of twists, impossible to follow and going on for far too long.
Like I said, this movie isn’t really for me. But I’m not sure who it is for, or rather, why anyone would settle for something so mediocre. Paul Feig isn’t shooting for greatness, here, or even originality. He’s settled into making movies like they were Applebee’s. Just make the menu big enough and even if the food sucks, undemanding customers will be happy. What other way is there to explain riblets, or this shit. It might be what people think they want, but it ain't nothing to be proud of.
Two Fingers for A Simple Favor.