Although it didn’t take quite as long as it did The Accountant to get to its recent sequel (nine years), Another Simple Favor takes place in the aftermath of 2018’s A Simple Favor, which detailed the friendship of vlogger Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), a PR director for a fashion company who goes missing at one point. The two know more about each other than maybe two friends should, meaning they have secrets that could destroy (or at least really embarrass) the other. But in the end of that first film, Emily goes to jail for killing a couple of family members, including her twin sister.
What we learn in the early minutes of the new film is that Stephanie has written a book about her friend’s murderous ways, but it isn’t selling well. That is, until Emily shows up at a book signing and publicly invites her old pal to her wedding to a rich Italian man named Dante (Michele Morrone), asking her to be her maid of honor, which make the event and Emily’s motives all the more intriguing. Still floating around the periphery of Another Simple Favor are Stephanie’s best friend Darren (Andrew Rannells) and even Emily’s ex-husband Sean (Henry Golding), who Stephanie actually slept with in the first film.
If for no other reason, this sequel scores massive points for being set primarily on the Italian island of Capri, easily one of the most beautiful places on earth, which returning director Paul Feig showcases exquisitely. Once there, we meet Dante’s suspicious and overly protective mother Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci), and we quickly learn that Dante is an important member of a mafia family that has a long rivalry with that of the Bartolo family, led by Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor), who has agreed to put aside the feud and make certain the wedding goes off without a hitch. Good luck with that.
In an effort to derail the wedding, Portia tracks down Stephanie’s estranged (and mentally not all there) mother (Elizabeth Perkins) and aunt Linda (Allison Janney), but true love wins the day and the two actually get married. And that’s when the bodies start piling up, beginning with Golding’s Sean, who dies in the shower. Somehow, the police suspect Stephanie of what ends up being several deaths, and we begin to suspect that framing the woman who put her in jail might have been Emily’s plan the entire time, especially when she turns on Stephanie after a truly tragic murder occurs.
Another Simple Favor is a very silly piece that might as well have been titled Pretty People Have Challenges, for all the seriousness this film affords major crimes. I remember genuinely enjoying the dark, funny tone of the first film, which is mostly repeated in the sequel. But the stakes seem lower this time around, and too many of the new characters are written broadly, with shallow performances to match. I can’t remember a time when I was less impressed with Janney’s work; that being said, Perkins’ not-all-there performance—which should come across as tragic—is actually quite humorous, and you might even feel guilty laughing at her.
In the end, the film comes across as a trifle, a pale imitation of the original, where the jokes don’t land as strongly and the insults feel less rooted in the kind of torment only two close people can deliver upon one another.
The film is now streaming on Prime Video.
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