THE STORY – Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) reunite on the beautiful island of Capri, Italy, for Emily’s extravagant wedding to a rich Italian businessman. Along with the glamorous guests, expect murder and betrayal to RSVP for a wedding with more twists and turns than the road from the Marina Grande to the Capri town square.
THE CAST – Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, Alex Newell, Henry Golding & Allison Janey
THE TEAM – Paul Feig (Director), Jessica Sharzer & Laeta Kalogridis (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 120 Minutes
Making a sequel is often a tricky endeavor. The creative team behind the project will either delight audiences or screw it up so badly that it tarnishes the reputation of the original film. Only a handful of sequels can even be debated as better than the original, and many are not worth mentioning in the same breath.
Much is the case for “Another Simple Favor,” Amazon’s follow-up to the 2018 Paul Feig-directed “A Simple Favor.” Premiering at South by Southwest, Feig is back in the director’s chair as the twisted world of Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) and Emily (Blake Lively) is explored on a much deeper level… this time set against the backdrop of the Italian island of Capri. Emily is set to marry a new wealthy beau (Michele Morrone), while Stephanie is tasked with doing Emily another simple favor: standing beside her as Emily’s maid-of-honor.
You might be asking yourself, “Didn’t Emily go to prison at the end of the first film after killing her twin sister and framing her husband (Henry Golding) for her own murder?” You would be correct in assuming that Emily’s best days are behind her, yet Feig and team have devised a new premise to continue Emily’s story. With slight misdirection and one line of dialogue to explain how Emily is free from prison and able to travel to Italy, almost the entire cast of the original movie is whisked away on an extravagant Italian getaway.
When we meet mommy vlogger Stephanie again, she has written a novel about her experiences as a true crime solver, with Emily as her main character. Emily struts back into Stephanie’s life, and before everyone knows it, the two are off to Italy in chic gowns and the biggest hats imaginable. But if “A Simple Favor” taught us anything, it’s that secrets and lies abound in Stephanie and Emily’s lives, and Emily’s dream wedding is sure to be ruined with murder and mayhem.
“Another Simple Favor” contains much of the same twists and turns as the original, with a lot less flavor baked into the convoluted premise. We are meant to suspend disbelief entirely, accepting the fact that Emily escapes a murder charge and is engaged to an Italian mafioso, while Stephanie documents all of her misadventures live on the internet to her many mommy followers, wealth surrounding the two, all while Stephanie fears that at any moment Emily will poison her Aviation gin martini. Why would Stephanie even accept Emily’s invitation to join the wedding festivities after Emily is known to murder or frame for murder everyone she’s ever loved?
It’s a good question that isn’t entirely answered, except that it’s just fun to have the gals back together for more chaos. Emily’s ex-husband Sean (Golding) is inexplicably attending Emily’s wedding as well, as are surprise guests like Emily’s mentally ill mother (Elizabeth Perkins, replacing Jean Smart from the original) and Emily’s aunt Linda (Allison Janey), both of whom she hasn’t seen in decades.
Without spoiling too much, “Another Simple Favor” gives way to intriguingly glamorous criminal activity that drags on for far too long. Tonally, this sequel matches its predecessor in delightfully sinful ways, with Emily and Stephanie taking jabs at one another a la the three blonde friends from “The White Lotus” season three. But the fashionable costumes, gorgeous sunsets, attractive people, and remarkable comic timing can’t save a bloated premise from nearly going off the rails.
It’s an enjoyable experience to enter Stephanie and Emily’s intricate and stylish world yet again as the two play opposite one another in a Hitchcockian-lite thriller. But while the first film introduced these characters as butting rivals, this sequel doesn’t quite stick the landing with a third act that keeps building and building to little payoff. It’s clear from the jump that the new characters introduced in this film will have a more significant role to play later on, so the (many) twists barreling towards the climax are simultaneously predictable and laughable.
Paul Feig doesn’t let the pressure of constructing a sequel bother him, though, as Kendrick and Lively make this new lived experience seem, dare I say, plausible. The two leads keep the drama and havoc swirling around them alive, while a dangerously underutilized Andrew Rannells as Stephanie’s fellow PTA compadre brings comedic relief when it’s most needed. The cast of “Another Simple Favor” makes an overstuffed plot work, even when their Italian adventure turns into a high-class disaster.
