Review of A Simple Favor (2018) by Jdx_Awesome — 10 Oct 2018

I really didn’t want to see this movie, and I had very low expectations thanks to Paul Feig’s feminist ghost movie. It was better than I expected, I can say that. A few of the jokes made me chuckle, and some things that weren’t jokes made me chuckle.

I was really excited that this was going to be really good once the opening started with the song and the appealing and stylized visuals, and then it immediately cuts to Anna Kendrick’s character making a vlog for moms.

That’s the thing about this movie, every time it did something I liked, something else either undercut it or just made it worse overall. It has a lot of good ideas that I would love to see done differently and, frankly, better.

This movie does have a decent style to it though. I like the scenes that are completely silent flashbacks except for one or two characters telling the story of what’s happening or just talking over it.

The plot was really stupid and complicated for no reason. I found myself totally lost multiple times. And just to be clear, a movie can have a complicated plot if it’s explained well, otherwise, it’s just confusing.

The dialogue is pretty cringe at times as well. It’s not always awful, but it’s not great overall. Also, the characters are actually not total idiots, which I did like. But the characters do change their minds pretty frequently for no reason except because the script said so.

For example, Blake Lively’s character’s husband switches between Lively and Kendrick every ten minutes and it’s really distracting. Also, he fakes being with one or the other, but the actor does a terrible job of conveying this, so you never really know what’s going on with him.

Not only is he not great in this movie, but I personally think Kendrick should stick with comedies. She’s not bad here, but definitely not good. I thought Lively was good though. Oh, also, I thought the scene with Lively’s character throwing the wrench up and hitting herself with it was done terribly and I laughed really hard.

The wrench was falling way too slow to look even close to right. You should have enough time to put on a necklace as a wrench is falling from that height onto your eye. Also, I don’t know how many people could throw a wrench that high.

I couldn’t. And here aim must be amazing to get it exactly where she wants it. And how did know it wasn’t gonna land wrong and just permanently mess her face up really badly? This scene is an example of how, besides the plot and dialogue, it’s just the little things that make this movie worse they it could be.

If a different director made this movie, it could’ve been pretty good in every sense of the word.