Twenty twenty-five is shaping up to be the year of the unexpected sequel. Ben Affleck has already dusted off his reading glasses for The Accountant 2, and the Four Horseman are about to take the stage again in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. But first, behold Another Simple Favor, a perfectly pleasant, if unnecessary, follow-up to 2018’s A Simple Favor. There has never been a better time to be a semi-forgotten film from the 2010s.
Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), after solving the disappearance and re-appearance of her former BFF, Emily Neslon (Blake Lively), in the first film, went from small-time Momfluencer to true-crime star. In the sequel, Stephanie learns that Emily is about to head off to Capri to marry her dashing new mafioso fiancé, Dante (Michele Morrone), which is surprising since Emily ended the prior film in prison for a variety of charges ranging from insurance fraud to fratricide. What’s even more surprising is that Emily—the woman who lied to her, tried to kill her, and went to prison partially because of her—wants Stephanie to be her maid of honor.
All of which is an elaborately silly way of bringing the two of them back together, and to double down on the greatest strength of the original film: Lively’s intoxicating performance and the chemistry she shares with Kendrick. Emily is like the femme fatale of a hardboiled detective tale, all sultry tones and sly smiles. Across A Simple Favor and its sequel, her brand of deadpan delivery makes everything she says sound like both a come-on and a death threat.
The first film saw Stephanie transform from a mousey supermom to a woman every bit as tough and sharp-tongued as her glamorous friend and, even if this transition didn’t feel particularly believable, it means that she’s positioned here as a worthy adversary for Emily. Their scenes together are the highlight of the film, with the two of them trading bon mots, veiled threats, and dark jokes in a series of lush locations. Throughout, we’re never quite sure whether Stephanie should be running away from Emily or running off with her.
As in A Simple Favor, the other star of the show is the clothing. Returning costume designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus actually manages to upstage the pinstripe suits and Ralph Lauren tuxedos that made Emily a viral sensation back in 2018. Her clothes become gradually more ostentatious as the film goes on, to the point that it almost becomes a running gag as we wait to see what she’ll turn up in next. By the time she breaks out the world’s largest sunhat and a body-hugging, black lace mourning ensemble, it’s pretty clear that Another Simple Favor is in on the joke.
The first film was divided against itself—half a typically broad Paul Feig comedy, half imitation Gone Girl—and the sequel doesn’t fare much better as a genuine thriller. The plot is overstuffed, Allison Janney’s talents are wasted on a character who’s more of a plot twist than a person, and the script again jams an incest subplot in for reasons that defy all reason. (Admittedly, the person Stephanie slept with the first time around was a half-sibling, but that’s still twice as much incest as you’d expect to encounter in a mainstream genre movie.) But when it’s just Emily and Stephanie sipping extra-dry martinis in the Italian sun while playing their own little game of “Fuck, Marry, Kill,” Another Simple Favor makes for a beguilingly off-kilter watch.
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