Blake Lively is a movie star. As unlikely as it might seem that anyone who got their big break on The CW would reach that status in the 2020s, when most of the most popular stars are people who have been famous for the entire century so far, Lively has curated her image such that she seems far less likely than most actresses her age to wind up back on TV anytime soon. After a series of old-fashioned movie-star roles, often showing off a glamorous fashion sense (and, when not, having her fight sharks in a bikini), It Ends With Us became her biggest-ever hit as a solo star just last summer. Even the ridiculous both-sides-ing of her big recent gossip-pages drama involving that movie amounts to her Ends with Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni turning her starriness against her, essentially claiming that because she holds a certain amount of star power, then he could not possibly have harassed her or behaved inappropriately.
Another Simple Favor, the new sequel to the foundational Blake Lively movie star text A Simple Favor, was written and shot before the dueling lawsuits over It Ends with Us, but seems sly about Lively’s image, and distortions of it, anyway. She reprises her role of Emily, the impeccably dressed suburban-mom conniver with a dark past; previously sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of her identical sister, she pops back up at a book event showcasing Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), her former mom-friend who solved her case and wrote a memoir about it. Her lawyers sprung Emily from jail, she’s getting married in Italy to a very wealthy man, and she inexplicably wants Stephanie to tag along as her maid of honor. High fashion, ostentatious opulence (including a rich/famous husband), winking at a mean-girl rep while silently denying its gossipy specifics, and pretending to be someone else… Emily is the Lively Brand in a nutshell.
It’s only fair, then, that Another Simple Favor would heighten the competition between that brand and another. The first movie positioned Kendrick’s widowed Stephanie as a less glamorous mommy-vlogger hustling to hide dark secrets of her own, and derived some of its strongest satire from the way its seamy mystery built out from the alliances, rivalries, and ambiguities of contemporary parenting. As the sequel opens, Stephanie has successfully rebranded herself as a hashtag-relatable cold-case sleuth, only her streaming audience hasn’t yet translated to major book sales – and would love to see her rematch wits with Emily, no matter how dumb or unlikely that sounds. So Stephanie jets off to Italy, the mom-vlogger-detective version of doing it for the gram.
The Italy locations go a long way toward making Another Simple Favor feel bigger and more opulent itself; despite its status as a somewhat inexplicable streaming-only release, and the fact that director Paul Feig doesn’t exactly have an eye for striking imagery, the movie undeniably features two big stars doing their thing in lush real-world locations (in this case, primarily Capri). In that sense, it’s like a Mom Bond – and though she’s the less glamorous half of the movie’s double act, it’s Anna Kendrick who really holds this series together, if a series is what it is now.
Actually, the movie hints at some more interesting directions in its off-screen action; Stephanie has apparently cracked several more local cases in the years since the events of the original film, and one informs her new backstory. (The idea that a teacher she busted for some heinous crimes may have been innocent nags at her.) Imagine the delight of watching Kendrick solve mom-centric crimes, making wisecracks in her sensible outfits, sort of a grown-up Nancy Drew (in pluck and tenacity, not just because Kendrick is roughly the size of a Smurf). Still, it might be harder to work Lively into that framework, and the sequel understandably wants to recreate their friction – so convincing (and, again, so genuinely starry) that unfounded rumors flew that the actresses didn’t especially get along during the first movie. (Now they seem to have made two movies without any problems, if anything sharing more screen time in the sequel, so this seems almost as farfetched as the idea that this movie was, ah, never coming out.)
So we march through the convoluted plotting-relatives mechanics of Another Simple Favor, which does offer some suitably outlandish twists amidst the lovely scenery, but with less amateur-sleuth sense of discovery than the first movie, which felt like it could genuinely stay in a comedy-of-manners gear before turning surprisingly noirish. The lack of surprise is compounded by the fact that Kendrick and Lively are no longer stealth movie stars surprisingly adept at playing adults after some years of teen-to-college roles. They’re obviously the reason this movie exists.
They are also, unavoidably, the reason it holds together, albeit just barely. They’re oppositional in demeanor: Lively’s slightly opaque rich-girl sadness versus Kendrick’s chirpy, darting self-effacement. They also contrast physically: Lively is 5’10, while Kendrick has a scene in Another Simple Favor where she fits neatly into a maid’s cart. But they do share some common ground, namely that they probably could have both had lucrative TV careers but have primarily chosen to work in cinema.
Kendrick, in particular, could have killed on a decent sitcom (complimentary), and instead opts for bringing a little updated-screwball energy into her most crowd-pleasing movies. Her faux-nervous talk-show energy belies a theater-kid gameness, which is just about perfect for a “normal” mom who’s actually chasing after a life of bespoke, follower-filled crime-solving. (Never is it suggested throughout the supposedly perilous antics of Another Simple Favor that Stephanie could just get a regular-type job.) Emily, too, has kind of a false reluctance about her station in life; sure, she’s doing what she must to survive, but the attention-grabbing outfits are probably optional. The movie itself, then, fuses Lively’s imperious-yet-put-upon style with Kendrick’s self-deprecation; it wants the glamor and the self-aware digs in equal measure. As a sequel, Another Simple Favor is a disappointment on both of those fronts: trying harder, yielding fewer laughs, saying less about the culture it purports to rib. As a shared showcase for Kendrick and Lively, though, it couldn’t be clearer.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others.
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