This week we went to see the Comedy-Thriller ‘A Simple Favor’ the first film for director Paul Feig since he received all the grief he got over his female-led ‘Ghostbusters’ a film we enjoyed a lot.
Based on the book of the same name by Darcey Bell, which we haven’t read but feel we need to check out now, you can buy it here:
The film centres on a single mother, Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), who spends her time helping the other mothers as well as running a small vlog and coping on the payments from her recently deceased husband’s life policy.
One day after collecting her child Miles (Joshua Satine) from school, she befriends Emily (Blake Lively) the mother of Miles best friend, Nicky (Ian Ho) who would appear to have a completely different life and would seem unlikely they would interact in any other manner of life.
They go for a drink and the two slowly share their lives with each other, Stephanie shares her guilt of kissing a close family member as Emily tells of the things she and her husband, Sean (Henry Golding) have got up to.
The friendship gives Stephanie the company she so wants, as the rest of the mothers seem to not want to be associated with her because she is so ‘perfect’ always volunteering, organising bake sales, charity events etc.
Emily also sees the friendship of having someone she can use to pick up her son and look after as she has to work long hours in her city job.
We have seen from past school events, that Stephanie is a keen photographer and when she takes a seemingly harmless picture of Emily and her son things change. Emily turns and almost in a rage, tells Stephanie to delete the photo which brings out a different side to her character.
Later, when Stephanie repeatedly apologises, Emily seems to react like it was a joke and to forget about it and things go back to normal.
A few ‘Simple Favors’ later, Emily is in a real need to stay at work and asks Stephanie to pick up her son and look after him until she can get home.
As it gets later into the night, Stephanie gets concerned and calls Sean, who was unable to pick his son up as he is in London due to his mother being in the hospital. He agrees it would be too late for Miles to be picked up and lets him stay for a sleepover, whilst he tries to get back and also contact Emily.
Stephanie finds from the office that apparently Emily has now gone to Marseille to sort out a contract! This seems to offer her some comfort until a body is found!!!
What follows are many fantastic twists and turns as Stephanie tries to find what happened to Emily as secrets from both their pasts will be unearthed and also is Emily really dead when out of the blue the children claim to have seen her?
We don’t really want to say more than that as although at many times the film is implausible, the performances are so good you get carried away with them plus the film has a superb soundtrack
This film really took us by surprise, Anna Kendrick is quite frankly incredible in the role and Blake Lively plays her character just as convincingly. The whole film is a joy and we have no doubts when we say we highly recommend it, in a year where we have had some disappointing blockbusters this should be a real challenger in our end of year top 10
Pre-order A simple favor at Amazon here:
View the film website here:
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