A Simple Favor (2018)
Directed by Paul Feig
Stephanie, a dedicated mother and popular vlogger, befriends Emily, a mysterious upper-class woman whose son Nicky attends the same school as Miles, Stephanie's son. When Emily asks her to pick Nicky up from school and then disappears, Stephanie undertakes an investigation that will dive deep into Emily's cloudy past.
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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.
“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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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Sketched out on paper in its entirety, the story looks an awful lot like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s seedier “criminal mischief” films (Shadow of a Doubt [1943]; Strangers on a Train [1951]; Dial M for Murder [1954]; Marnie [1964]).
There’s also more than a dollop of trashy, early 1990s thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and Single White Female (1992).
There are elements of Single White Female to be found in how much she initially copes with Blake Lively’s Emily, and watching her performance, it’s difficult to argue with.
Is Stephanie a dauntless amateur sleuth on her friend's trail or a Single White Female eager to steal Emily's glitzy life?
Sleuthing gives Stephanie a focus – as she blossoms, her wardrobe is more defined and refined, without becoming too Single White Female.
It doesn’t help that Kendrick’s portrayal of Stephanie, in part because the script isn’t ever able to get a handle on her, veers from feeling sincere to being sarcastic to approaching Single White Female status.
From the trailer you would think, this movie is a Single White Female meets Gone Girl type of missing/kidnapping murder mystery and who knows who did it.