A Simple Favour ★★★ ½ ☆ | Movie Review

Synopsis

Stephanie and Emily become unlikely friends thanks to their sons. But when Emily goes missing Stephanie discovers that she doesn't really know anything about her at all.

Review

Fair warning, if you see this film you will want Blake Lively to be your lover by the end of the it.

There's no denying that this is an entertaining film. There's also no denying that it's predictable. Even without knowing the plot you can basically guess the way it's going to progress.

Blake Lively is amazing though. I honestly thought I'd never seen her in anything, but of course she's been in Green Lantern and Accepted. The latter being a favourite and the former... well, I thought Deadpool had taken care of that one for us... oh well. She does a great job of her role in this one. You can see her devious nature in the way she interacts with everyone and she really does improve the scenes she's in.

I love Anna Kendrick, she's funny and very talented but I wasn't overly keen on her character in this. While I understand that Stephanie takes a major character shift when she realises what has happened, I didn't enjoy the way they did that on the screen. There were some baby steps followed by some huge leaps. At one point I was convinced that they'd gone... "Anna Kendrick always sings... we should get some of that in there." I don't feel like it added anything to the film at all. I'd be interested to see how her character unfolds in the book.

The humour in it is entertaining but the side story of the other "mums" and particularly their inclusion in the summing up of the story feels out of place and more comedy than was right for this film.

Rating this one is tricky. Apart from those odd bits I didn't hate the film and none of it was badly done... but I don't think I enjoyed it either. I took the evening to think it over and honestly I'm still not sure so therefore it's sitting at the three and a half mark. There's an outside possibility that I'll watch it again to see if I can figure it out, but I don't think it'll be any time soon unless I'm really at a loose end.

Based on the book A Simple Favour by Darcey Bell.

What should you do?

I personally wouldn't recommend watching this until it's streaming. But plenty of other people would disagree with me on that.

Movie thing you wish you could take home

Emily and Sean's house. Although I'm baffled as to why the kitchen is so small so I'd probably expand into the living room space.