Nancy Drew and the Case of the Gone Gossip
Girl
By Jonas Schwartz
Paul Feig’s A Simple Favor is a deliciously twisty comedy-thriller in the
Hitchcockian vein with two delectable performances by Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively.
Square, single mom Stephanie
(Kendrick, Into The Woods) tries
just a little bit too hard to please. Her dull life turns upside down when she
meets the dynamic Emily (Lively, Gossip Girl)
through their little boys. Stephanie is instantly bewitched by the fashionable,
flip sophisticate. They drink dry martinis London style and reveal dark
secrets. Then one day Emily asks for just a simple favor, for Stephanie to pick
up Emily's son from school. After that call, Emily vanishes. Her husband Sean (Henry
Golding, Crazy Rich Asians) hasn’t
heard from her at all, and her work doesn’t seem to notice she’s gone.
Stephanie leaves it to herself to solve the mystery. The once buttoned up
neurotic blossoms due to the excitement as she chases old secrets to their
roots.
Feig plays homage to the French '60s
neo-noir thrillers of Claude
Chabrol and Francois Truffaut,
who, in turn, had been kissing up to their portly Hollywood mentor, Hitch. Feig sets the tone with a ravishing
soundtrack containing post-modern French songs by Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte
Bardot, and Françoise Hardy and an enveloping score by Theodore Shapiro. The costumes by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus mock
trends of the 1960s with couture female tuxedos and hostess dresses in bright
suburban colors.
The script by Jessica Sharzer, based
on Darcey Bell's 2017
novel, follows the tropes of the scheming femme fatales and the good girls who
climb into the mud after them. The characters are wickedly smart which makes
both Stephanie and Emily worthy adversaries. Some of the strings do unravel, in
particular the character of Emily's fashion empresario boss played by Rupert
Friend could have been woven more into the mystery to add menace. Even without
charting new territory, Sharzer keeps the audience on their toes, but still
allows them to think they're two steps ahead of the script only to be dead
wrong often.
Feig's
cast has been obviously schooled on the conventions of the 1940's noir
characters they tease, so that they're able to follow the established form, but
also make the characters their own. Kendrick, who began her career on the stage
as a child, is a winning protagonist. Her insecurities and constant babbling
illustrate a woman desperate to belong. The
script clues the audience in immediately when Stephanie reveals to her mommy
vlogger audience that her best friend that she’s known for ONLY A FEW WEEKS has
gone missing. Kendrick may be a pigeon, but audiences empathize with her
loneliness and isolation. Lively plays Emily as a force of nature, a commanding
presence who manipulates for the same reason other people breath. Like in Crazy Rich Asians, Golding projects an
irresistible sexiness, but he unselfishly allows the dominant women surrounding him to take full
focus in the film. Feig fills his cast with great supporters like Andrew
Rannells, Kelly McCormack, and Aparna Nancherla as the gossipy school parents,
and Olivia Sandoval and Bashir Salahuddin as two over-jovial but heavily
suspicious detectives, she for the insurance company, he for the police. Jean
Smart as a boozy piece of the puzzle is a hilarious gem as always.
Like a
rich, French meal, A Simple Favor
savors its flavors, creating an appetizing treat that's a tastier whole than
its parts may suggest on their own. Already adept at skewering the conventions
of the spy thriller (Spy), the buddy
cop comedy (The Heat), and the
girl's-day-out comedies (Bridesmaids),
director Paul Feig shows his flair for subtlety and intrigue without the
gross-out elements upon which his earlier comedies relied.
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