#REVIEW: “ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOR”

By Mr. Will Wong

Let’s be real. Favours are never that simple.  Picking up where we left in 2018’s A SIMPLE FAVOR, the stakes are upped in this latest installment of Paul Feig‘s Dark Comedy Mystery series, ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOR. Set in scenic Italy, we get even more deception, crazy plot twists, and of course, laughs.

We catch up with Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), going from Mommy Blogger to popular Crime Author after helping cracking the case on alluring “friend” Emily (Blake Lively).  The two reunite and Emily invites Stephanie to Italy for her upcoming wedding to Dante (Michele Morrone), a mysterious businessman who elicits a mixed bag of reactions from the locals.  A gorgeous, lavish wedding on the seaside. What could go wrong, right?  Well, everything.  People begin dying mysteriously and we begin to wonder if Emily is trying to exact a carefully calculated revenge plot on Stephanie, or is there more than meets the eye?

Feig crafts a smart, meticulously-stylized film. Everything from costumes to location scouting feels elevated, picturesque and glamorous, building upon this Film’s predecessor ambitiously. Like the last installment, this Film on the whole succeeds because of the brilliant chemistry between Lively and Kendrick, and if anything the humour is even more unhinged than ever here.  Savage, actually. And oh, there’s so many gay twists to throw you off-balance! The casting of Transmasculine entertainer Alex Newell as Stephanie’s sidekick feels intentional, and the Film knows its audience. Both stars again are fantastic and Lively gets so much more to work with this go around after disappearing for a bit in the last film. She navigates the various twisty shifts in her characters’ tones with great skill, creating very separate identities so convincingly.

Never giving away too much, Feig leaves us on our toes right up to the finish and we genuinely can say we didn’t quite see the end coming.

This truly should be experienced on the big screen, but lucky us, we get it enjoy it at home on Prime Video Canada May 1, 2025.