TRUTH AND LIES
Single mom tries to solve best friend’s sudden disappearance in ‘A Simple Favor’
Sleekly seductive and smart, “A Simple Favor” opens with Stephanie (Anna Kendrick, perfectly typecast), a homey kitchen blogger and single mother. Perhaps the most obsessive-compulsive single mom anyone could imagine.
Before Stephanie can talk about recipes or housekeeping hints, she must bring her viewers up to date on Emily, who has been missing for five days now. Stephanie, in flashbacks, fills us in on how the two met and became best friends. We know that notion is obviously a joke, one Stephanie hasn't recognized.
As played by statuesque Blake Lively with nonchalant irony and a formidable, some might call it steely, air, Emily is a buzzsaw — cynical, alcoholic and very mysterious. Photos are never allowed. With a mean mouth that could slice ice, she dumps on her handsome husband (“Crazy Rich Asians” hottie Henry Golding), a failed novelist who now teaches.
Emily complains about their financial woes and can't afford a nanny. As she continually pawns her son off on Stephanie, another school “mom” (Andrew Rannells' very gay househusband) breezily notes, “She doesn't realize she's working for free.” Yet Stephanie isn't completely clueless, and what quickly becomes apparent is that “A Simple Favor” is playing with our expectations and notions. Is Stephanie really the little country mouse to Emily's city mouse? Or does her agenda include an unhappy husband who would enjoy arriving home to find dinner ready?
If this twisty puzzle of a thriller asks, What is love? It also wonders, What do you
really know about the person you love?
Once it's revealed someone has $4 million coverage in the case of a certain someone's death, Emily's disappearance brings not just the police but insurance investigators. Which leads us to wonder how, really, did Stephanie's husband die?
Director Paul Feig, whose “Heat” rates as a comedic pinnacle in its pairing of Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, isn't going for big laughs here.
This adaptation of Darcey Bell's novel by Jessica Sharzer flies along with surprising revelations, steamy (is there any other kind in this type of movie?) sex and a side trip to Feig's native Michigan.
In “A Simple Favor,” everyone is not exactly who they appear to be. The fun is being part of a game that keeps you guessing until the end.