Paul Feig
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Double Indemnity (1944)
Directed by Billy Wilder
influenced A Simple Favor (2018)
Themes Characters Plot
Adapted by Jessica Sharzer (Nerve) from Darcey Bell’s 2017 novel, A Simple Favor pulls from a plethora of sources — Gone Girl, Rebecca, Gaslight, Double Indemnity, Diabolique — some of which the screenplay literally name-checks; it’s less homage or even pastiche than a bargain-basement mash-up of various superior inspirations.
Like Fred MacMurray’s weak-kneed patsy in “ Double Indemnity ,” Emily is thunderstruck by one of those noir blondes who could easily prove fatal.
If Double Indemnity were a hangout movie, this would be its sequel.
“A Simple Favor” is a sort of collage, featuring thematic snippets from “L’Avventura,” “Vertigo,” and “Double Indemnity,” set in the updated turf of Douglas Sirk, in an archetypal suburb that’s decorated in the catchy bright colors of the Hollywood sixties.
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Directed by Richard Donner
influenced The Heat (2013)
Characters Themes Visuals Plot
Not long afterwards came Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines in “Running Scared” (1986) and an inspired pairing of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover for the first “Lethal Weapon” film (1987) that really reinforced the loose cannon-conservative lawman match-up.
In the vein of ’80s action classics like 48 Hrs. and Lethal Weapon, The Heat is a modern rendition on the buddy cop film.
Paying homage to its genre roots, The Heat opens with a bouncy '70s-cop-show credit sequence, and follows it by twice mastering the vanishing art of the efficient character introduction; in just a few short minutes, it proves itself as deft as even the likes of Lethal Weapon at nailing down exactly who these two wildly different characters are.
In "The Heat" we're closer to full-on action mode, akin to "48 Hrs." or "Lethal Weapon" territory than a spoofy affair on the order of the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg movie "The Other Guys."
The characters deal with things Lethal Weapon's Murtaugh and Riggs never would have had to worry about.
They're set loose on a flimsy, Lethal Weapon-y drug case, an excuse for the ol' odd-couple tropes to play out: the uncool Ashburn needs to learn not to be so uptight, while the hard Mullins needs to learn to let down her emotional guard.
Not long afterwards came Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines in “Running Scared” (1986) and an inspired pairing of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover for the first “Lethal Weapon” film (1987) that really reinforced the loose cannon-conservative lawman match-up.
Dippold was initially inspired by the buddy-cop comedy Running Scared, which includes a montage of hot babes riding on the back of Billy Crystal's and Gregory Hines' scooters.
When he was in town last month, director Paul Feig confessed that the movie’s inspiration came to Parks and Recreation writer Katie Dippold while watching the 1986 cable staple Running Scared, which starred Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines as a couple of mismatched Chicago detectives stumbling onto a totally unremarkable mystery and bantering their way through a brisk two hours.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Directed by Frank Capra
influenced Last Christmas (2019)
Themes Characters Plot
I will also admit that, even though the final twist didn’t bother me or strike me as cloying or facile, it’s still pretty hard to accept, Last Christmas entering into that melodramatic Frank Capra-esque realm of emotionally-saccharine magical realism few filmmakers other than the It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington master have been able to pull off with any consistency.
The Hallmark Channel, Lifetime and even Netflix have proven that for every The Bishop’s Wife or It’s a Wonderful Life , there’s also a place for improbable romantic cheese involving holiday spirit and a strategically placed sprig of mistletoe.
You can easily picture Emilia Clarke taking on any role in a holiday classic and make it believable (Mary Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, Ellen in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation).
On the contrary, knowing that Tom is basically It’s A Wonderful Life -ing Kate makes the movie that much sweeter while you watch it.
British producer David Livingstone ( Judy ) was pondering on Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life when he came up with the idea.
It’s A Wonderful Life has gone down as a classic since its release and Christmas Vacation is a non-stop laugh riot.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Directed by Jay Roach
influenced Spy (2015)
Visuals Themes
The truly inspired scenes are far outnumbered by the familiar ones recycled from earlier spy spoofs like Austin Powers and Top Secret!
"Austin Powers" has an entire trilogy devoted to the concept while the stylish opening of "Spy" is a throwback to the opening James Bond film title sequences, which films like "Spy Hard" and even "Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" already utilized 5-10 years ago.
Spy stops just short of being an all-out spoof ala Austin Powers , but Feig's affection for all things James Bond is clear to see as he fits the film into the framework of a classic Sean Connery-era 007 outing (complete with Shirley Bassey-esque theme song).
With Spy, Feig, McCarthy and a strong ensemble cast have staked out the territory for what could be the kickoff to a major franchise to rival Mike Myers’ Austin Powers comedies or Peter Sellers’ The Pink Panther series, if the movie world needs any more franchises.
Where Austin Powers poked fun at the James Bond movies’ familiar tropes and old-fashioned misogyny by imitating them to exaggerated levels, Spy ’s female focus allows for a different and more knowing kind of parody, while also giving McCarthy her most nuanced role to date.
Spy is the funniest thing to happen to the espionage genre since Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
“Are you trying to Diabolique me?” Stephanie asks Sean at one point, a reference to the classic 1955 French film about a wife, a mistress and a murder—and a perfect alibi.
When A Simple Favor actually pushes for an film reference, cineastes at the screening I attended applauded Stephanie’s making emphatic references to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s psychological conspiracy thriller Diabolique (or maybe she’s thinking of the inferior 1996 remake with Sharon Stone?), when accusatory fingers start pointing in her direction.
There is another savvy moment, wonderfully played by Kendrick, where an increasingly paranoid Stephanie senses similarities with Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic 1955 thriller "Diabolique" and questions if she might be the victim of gaslighting.Lively is every bit Kendrick's match as Emily, a woman who can be warm one second and prickly the next, the scope of her complicated character coming gradually to light once her haunting memory is all which remains.
Too much of the new Ghostbusters is concerned with paying homage to the first movie, from the use of Ray Parker Jr.’s theme song to the incorporation of the Ghostbusters logo into the plot (the logo comes to life as an evil spirit).
“Ghostbusters” gets off to a good start, seemingly going its own way and not copying the 1984 movie.
You can draw plenty of parallels between this new Ghostbusters and the 1984 original.
After months of negative online buzz, director Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters remake emerges as a consistently funny pleasure, never quite as sharp or inspired as the 1984 original, but radiating such good cheer that comparisons between the two films don’t much matter.
No “Ghostbusters” is an island, and stacked against the charming 1984 original, the 2016 effort becomes a pale, unnecessary echo.
“Ghostbusters” is back, with its impossibly jaunty theme song bouncing away in my head again like it’s 1984.
In “The Heat,” Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy put a feminine spin on the buddy copy film, a male-dominated sub-genre made popular by movies like “48 Hours” and “Bad Boys.”
Bullock and/or McCarthy are in every scene, driving the film in the way that Nick Nolte & Eddie Murphy drove “48 Hours” or Charles Grodin & Robert DeNiro drove “Midnight Run.”
They’re as tough as any male pairing of the genre — Gibson and Glover in “Lethal Weapon,” Murphy and Nolte in “48 Hours” — but they bring a strong “girlfriends” feeling to the table.
“48 Hours” blended the kind of rapid-fire jokes, serious shootouts, and blatant disregard for “by the book” police work that’s since become a trademark of such movies.
Someone Great is best pitched as Bridesmaids meets 500 Days of Summer — it’s a female led comedy with heartbreak, self-worth and self-realization at its core.
That’s the difference between a stellar Bridesmaids and Girls Trip and meh copycats like Rough Night and Ibiza .
Someone Great borrows from the post- Bridesmaids canon of excellent, raunchy comedies driven by friendship between women.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: As adorable as Stanfield and Rodriguez are together, the real emotional core of the film is the friendship between Jenny, Blair and Erin, who are hilarious—so the titles that come to mind are Bridesmaids and Broad City .
If you’ll allow me to finally play the gender card, this is a disservice to female audiences who have been craving this kind of finely-crafted, debaucherous touchstone since “Bridesmaids” ignited this fire eight years ago.
In the case of A Simple Favor, what the audience should know is that, even though the screenplay by Jessica Sharzer, adapted from Darcey Bell’s novel, borrows some narrative cues from gloomier fare like Strangers on a Train and Vertigo, it’s a lighthearted mystery with a heaping helping of humor, more in tune with happy-go-lucky classics like North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief.
Director Feig even includes sly references to Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona.
Though the plot tries to cozy up to a Hitchcockian tradition of vanishing women and amateur gumshoes, A Simple Favor is, by design, no Vertigo.
“A Simple Favor” is a sort of collage, featuring thematic snippets from “L’Avventura,” “Vertigo,” and “Double Indemnity,” set in the updated turf of Douglas Sirk, in an archetypal suburb that’s decorated in the catchy bright colors of the Hollywood sixties.
The Hangover (2009)
Directed by Todd Phillips
influenced Bridesmaids (2011), The Heat (2013)
Characters Plot Themes
Melissa McCarthy as Megan: If you compare Megan to Alan (Zach Galifianakis) in The Hangover, then you're just being lazy.
Indeed, the only title character who threatens to give Wiig a scene-stealing shove for the bouquet is the groom’s gruff-voiced sister, Megan, played by Melissa McCar-thy in a swaggering, goofily weird turn reminiscent of Zach Galifianakis in "The Hangover.”
In the lead-up to the film’s release, there were rumblings that Bridesmaids was a straight rip-off of The Hangover , in which a male wedding party bonds over roofies, tasers and Tyson.
Yes, "Bridesmaids" is pretty much a rip-off of "The Hangover" with a genitals swap-out.
Paul Feig is the director, but what makes Bridesmaids so striking is the near-absence of male figures, so that it becomes almost a mirror image of The Hangover.
Make no mistake, this is not another screechy, shallow, smug, hair-brainedfor lack of a better term"chick flick" like 2007's insufferable " License to Wed " or 2009's equally detestable " Bride Wars ," nor is it a female version of 2009's overrated, mean-spirited " The Hangover ," as so many are already labeling it as.
2016’s The Girl On The Train followed in its wake, and it seems that director Paul Feig ( Bridesmaids, Spy, Ghostbusters) has set up to contribute another story in the same mystery-thriller vein.
In light of media attention over the case, her mommy vlog goes viral.It would be easy to compare "A Simple Favor" to other recent films based on popular, female-driven literary thrillers2014's " Gone Girl " and 2016's " The Girl on the Train " instantly come to mindand, indeed, there are stylistic parallels in their whodunit, howdunit, and whydunit destinations.
Indeed, A Simple Favor: The Movie comes damn close to being a parody of the "murder mystery among the wine moms" genre, typified cinematically by 2014's Gone Girl and 2016's immodestly schlocky The Girl on the Train .
In The Girl on The Train , Emily Blunt, reeling and drunk after breaking up with Justin Theroux, uncovers a web of lies that leads to his messy demise, his comeuppance, in fact.
But the man behind crowd-pleasing comedies including Bridesmaids , Spy and The Heat turns out to be the perfect person to ensure that the adaptation of Darcey Bell’s 2017 novel A Simple Favor doesn’t just come off as another second-rate version of Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train .
Continuing Hollywood’s obsession with film adaptations of pulpy book club page-turners (think Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and Big Little Lies), A Simple Favor is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Darcey Bell.
Adapted by Jessica Sharzer (Nerve) from Darcey Bell’s 2017 novel, A Simple Favor pulls from a plethora of sources — Gone Girl, Rebecca, Gaslight, Double Indemnity, Diabolique — some of which the screenplay literally name-checks; it’s less homage or even pastiche than a bargain-basement mash-up of various superior inspirations.
In light of media attention over the case, her mommy vlog goes viral.It would be easy to compare "A Simple Favor" to other recent films based on popular, female-driven literary thrillers2014's " Gone Girl " and 2016's " The Girl on the Train " instantly come to mindand, indeed, there are stylistic parallels in their whodunit, howdunit, and whydunit destinations.
That’s probably because I read the Darcey Bell thriller novel that it’s based on and saw a Gone Girl rip-off coming a mile away, right down to the big non-shocking plot twist that comes in the middle.
His latest, the dark and twisted comedy “A Simple Favor,” combines Hitchcockian vibes with a splash of “Gone Girl” to mixed results.
Following a burst of contemporary female-fronted psychological thrillers such as Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, A Simple Favor carefully straddles the line between parody and homage, often settling into a campy elegance, not unlike that of Death Becomes Her.
A slight change of pace for usually comic minded filmmaker Paul Feig and a moderate reworking of dark themes similar to those found in David Fincher’s Gone Girl , A Simple Favor is a breezy and entertaining morality tale.
The characters themselves reference classic thrillers Diabolique and Gaslight , and there are echoes of movies like Double Indemnity and Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion , in addition to the more recent Girl sensations.
The investigation leads her onto the turf of detective Shannon Mullins (McCarthy), a rumpled, tough, law-enforcement force-of-nature, who terrifies everyone in her precinct from her captain (Tom Wilson, aka Biff from “Back to the Future”) on down to the lowliest street thugs.
The only people more scared of her than Beantown’s lowlifes are Beantown’s finest, including her boss, Captain Woods (Tom Wilson, Back to the Future’s Biff Tannen).
She’s so irritable that her boss (Tom Wilson of “Back to the Future”) is as afraid of her as her favorite drug dealing perp (Spoken Reasons is this caricature’s stage name).
Look for Tom Wilson (Biff from “Back to the Future”) as Officer Mullins’ boss.
Biff from the Back to the Future trilogy) as McCarthy’s weak-kneed boss.
A lot of screen space is given to let the two stars develop, but notable inclusions to the supporting cast are Thomas F Wilson (forever recognisable as the villain Biff from Back to the Future) as a lame police captain and Michael Rapaport as McCarthy's equally verbose sibling.
Channeling Sharon Stone circa “Basic Instinct,” she strikes an ideal balance between enigmatic and brutally honest, with comic chops to match.
For Lively, this is her Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct moment: She stomps through the film like a femme fatale warrior—so gorgeous and mysterious and alluring, it was like she was constructed in a lab to the play this part.
(You can see the heavy influences of films like “Body Heat” and “Basic Instinct” throughout.)
Devoted watchers of Turner Classic Movies and collectors of Criterion will make themselves giddy counting the references to classic thrillers of the ‘30s and beyond (the very first thing in this writer’s notes on the film is an all-caps “CHARADE!”)…
Even though it’s not Hitch, Stanley Donen’s Charade is an obvious tonal influence.
And many combine those elements, resulting in films such as "48 Hours," "Bad Boys," "Rush Hour," "Men in Black" and so on.
Since then, fans of the relatively new sub-genre have enjoyed the pairing of such opposites as Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker (“Rush Hour,” 1998), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (“Hot Fuzz,” 2007), and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (“The Other Guys,” 2010).
Directed by Paul Feig, who also helmed the surprise 2011 smash hit “Bridesmaids,” and scripted by Katie Dippold of “Parks and Recreation,” “The Heat” is derivative of any number of mismatched buddy movies from “48 HRS.” and “Midnight Run” to the “Rush Hour” films.
In fact, it follows the same basic formula of movies like “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Rush Hour.”
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Directed by J.J. Abrams
influenced Ghostbusters (2016)
Plot Themes
Yet even when falling into an unchallenging mold, akin to The Force Awakens in following a structure that recalls its original predecessor, it is the new elements that help Ghostbusters work as well as it does, particularly due to a pair of new cast members.
In many ways, the best film to compare with “Ghostbusters” is “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the most baggage-laden film of 2015.
However, none of the Ghostbusters ’ revamping is done in spite of the original; it’s a film just as unabashed as likes of The Force Awakens in its ties to the powerful undercurrents of nostalgia, though its lack of direct narrative continuation certainly lends its references more of a knowing wink.
Like those who complained that The Force Awakens aped the structure of A New Hope, it’s likely that many will make the same complaint of Feig’s take on this franchise.
As we saw with The Force Awakens , that’s the way to extend a franchise because it excites the fan base rather than alienating them.
Like Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens before it, Ghostbusters is a soft remake that relies on a familiar formula to ensure the safest product possible.
The Other Guys (2010)
Directed by Adam McKay
influenced The Heat (2013), Spy (2015)
Themes Characters
That bar sequence was just one of the parts that reminded me of The Other Guys, a far superior send-up of buddy-cop comedies.
In "The Heat" we're closer to full-on action mode, akin to "48 Hrs." or "Lethal Weapon" territory than a spoofy affair on the order of the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg movie "The Other Guys."
Feig’s indifference to craft hurts the movie—to name a counterexample, Adam McKay’s similar The Other Guys could pass as an impressively crisp actioner even without the comedy—but he knows funny, and he gives his actors plenty of room to work.
She’s the crassness of Mark Wahlberg in “The Other Guys” paired with the laughing at authority personality trait of Hutch in “Starsky and Hutch”.
Since then, fans of the relatively new sub-genre have enjoyed the pairing of such opposites as Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker (“Rush Hour,” 1998), Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (“Hot Fuzz,” 2007), and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (“The Other Guys,” 2010).
Considering female-led comedies though, the comparison situation Bridesmaids drew to The Hangover absolutely pertains to The Heat, which certainly gave me more of a laugh-induced belly-ache than The Other Guys did on its opening night.