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A Simple Favor
A nerdy single mom becomes friends with a very attractive but mysterious neighbor who is leagues above her in looks department. But one day the mysterious woman disappears and this forces the nerdy mom, our lead to uncover truths about the disappearance.
I enjoyed this movie thoroughly and since it came out this weekend if you are interested to watch it but are on the fence, I suggest you go watch it right now . Only asterisk her is if you are into the sensibilities of Paul Feig as a director. This is a murder mystery and at no point does it try to be a comedy but the comedic moments comes through characters involved in the mystery and those characters have Paul Feig's comedic sensibilities. He does deliver a compelling murder mystery/thriller. Almost all the main characters in the movie has layers to them. Some characters that look innocent are not so innocent and some characters that are vile and quite despicable can't help themselves but be that way. Blake Lively plays the role a pathological liar and femme fatale quite perfectly. Its one of those roles that's comparable to Sharon Stone's character in Basic Instinct. Only difference is that there is no x-rated stuff in this movie. Director cleverly makes almost all the main characters feel like culprits. So, for a while there you feel that the protagonist is somehow involved with the disappearance of Blake Lively and for sometime her husband who is played by Henry Golding feels like culprit.Another important thing that people going into this movie should note is that this is not a David Fincher movie. In David Fincher movies every character has certain darkness to them. There are no black and white characters. The darkness of the characters comes from the scripts, the actors chosen by David Fincher and of course Fincher's direction. But in this movie the script is written for a director like Paul Feig and the actors chosen for the movie are approved by Paul Feig. So you need to know that before going into the movie. The complexity of the characters in this movie are much more compartmentalized and are distinguishable by audience as opposed to a David Fincher movie. For example in Social Network, David Fincher presented Mark Zukerberg as this vile character thats reprehensibly ambitious and who is getting layed in toilet because he is famous. Thats a lot of layers to a character thats supposed to be this great genius. Where as in this movie in one scene we get a comedic/innocent Anna Kendrick and in the next scene we get a smart investigative Anna Kendrick. Thats a compartmentalized portrayal of a character than a complicated character thats walking with all the inner demons in them all at once.You can see the script turning off some of the characteristics of a character and turning on some other characteristics required for the scene in this movie. There are 3 or 4 times in the movie where I wished it had been directed by David Fincher as opposed to Paul Feig so that I could get that dark turn I wanted for the story to take but Paul Feig detours it into some not so dark places.
Key thing you need to understand is that this movie is the cinematic equivalent of the mystery/investigative novels read by housewives. This movie is aimed for middle aged women as I saw a lot of them in the theater. Luckily I went with my girlfriend so I didn't feel like a weirdo sitting by myself in a theater with mostly middle aged women on a girls night. So anyone going for a hardcore mystery will not like it. There is some dark stuff but the movie brings it back to light place quite quickly so that it doesn't loose its key demographic. You are not going to get a movie with grit and feel of something like Seven. But the movie is engaging enough for you to forgive the films unwillingness to go the distance. A much easier way to say about this movie is, there is a joke for almost every 5 minutes of the movie even till the end. So, even during the climax there are jokes in the dialogue. I liked it. However some jokes didn't work in terms of the dialogue.
Spoilers
So the main storyline of the movie involves Blake Lively's sudden disappearance. Initially everyone thinks she just ran off due to financially unsustainable marriage but later her body is found in the bottom of a lake. Due to shared grief between Anna Kendrick and Lively's husband they start an affair. After a while when she decides to move into the house she starts feeling Lively's presence not just imaginarily but even physically. The straw that breaks camel's back is when she receives an envelop through her son's friend aka Lively's actual son which contains a very dark and disturbing information about our protagonist's past which only Lively could have known. The reason for this whole taunting is because Lively , who isn't dead is angered by her husband's affair with Kendrick.
The reveal of the secret behind the identity of the body found in the lake is uncovered by Anna kendrick after she knows for sure Lively is not dead. Director does a very layered approach to the investigation. I liked it so much. It almost feels like her investigation is leading her deeper and deeper into the distrubing past of Blake lively's character. Blake Lively as I said is a very disturbing and exploitative character. She is the kind of girl that you hear about in the news that is murdered by her husband for having an affair. I always wondered how guys can be so dumb in judging the character of certain kind of women. I can only presume you will see lot of such women in Los Angeles because only so few of them make it to the top that the rest of them have to find a source of income to live and they use sex as a power play to make money. So Blake Lively's character is a parasite and she is born "evil". During the first layer of investigation Anna kendrick through a nude painting of Blake Lively tracks down its painter. As I said she is a parasite and also happens to be a bi sexual. So she scams the painter for a lot of money under the pretext of a sexual relationship and vanishes. The painter seems like one of those nice people who believes the best in people and moves on if life screws them over. So she moved on from Blake lively's betrayal. Linda Cardellini plays that role so well. She is tough in appearance but not at heart. So Blake lively was able to scam her. From there Anna Kendrick's investigation goes a layer deeper. She finds out Blake Lively's original identity and tracks down her address and sees her mom in a rather tension filled sequence. You could see the impact of Blake Lively's disturbing actions during her teenage years in her mother. Her mother is living a sad and depressed life.Through her , she learns that Lively's character has a twin and together they kill their father by burning the house down at a very young age due to some fight in the family. That forces them to run away from the house and split because twin killers are easy to track down if they stay together. We follow one sister who stays in America as the other sister movies to Mexico and becomes a drug addict. One the day of her disappearance she goes to visit her long last junkie twin who starts black mailing her for 1 million dollars. So Blake Lively cooks up a plan to kill two birds with one shot. So she kills her twin sister faking her own death and once her husband gets the insurance money due to her death she will join him and they can live together. But those plans are slightly spoiled by Anna Kendricks interference and ultimately Anna Kendrick orchestrates a sting to make Lively confess for her crimes.
Henry golding is perfect as a guy stuck between these two women. The movie cleverly shows how even attractive guys like Henry are not immune to the charms and scams of someone as vile and as attractive as Blake Lively. That was so great because the movie could have easily followed the route of showing the pair as a mismatched couple where Lively's character is too good looking and her husband is way below her league. But Paul Feig wanted the pair to look like a believable couple. I liked how no 2 characters are in complete honesty with each other. Blake Lively has got her husband wrapped around her finger and she is the perfect embodiment of femme fatale in any movie ever. Her character was written so well. It almost feels like one of those supermodels who switch between dating celebrities or increase the profile of men they date with time as they themselves get more and more famous.One of the scenes towards the end of the movie is another gem. There is a point in the story when Anna Kendrick had to choose between siding with Lively's character and blame her husband for forcing his wife to fake her own death so they can get the insurance money or side with husband to perform a sting on Lively as make her confess. By this point she realizes that Lively is a pathological liar and her husband didn't ever love Anna Kendrick. So she has reason to hate both of them. But she choose to side with the husband and expose Lively. I am not sure how much of it has to do with the findings from her own investigation that uncovered the evil of Lively's character and how much of it has to do with how a female mind works and not wanting to let a woman getaway with what she has done to her husband. But nonetheless it was a very good storyline.
The gripe I had with the movie was there are many scenes where the movie could have gone deeper and darker with certain storylines. Blake Lively could have executed her disappearance plan much more carefully. After all , she is a skillful parasite and femme fatale. Her move to taunt Anna Kendrick ultimately became the bane of her existence. Had she not done that , Anna Kendrick wouldn't have investigated her background. Even her plan to fake her death to get the insurance money of 4 million was so spontaneous. She never planned on killing her sister until she met her. Its little hard to believe that she cooked up this whole plot in a matter of seconds. To use the millions of insurance money she must have to either disappear with her whole family. That would have been a very suspicious getaway plan. I also didn't get how Anna Kendrick fits into the whole exploitative nature of Blake lively. From her past we know that she used lot of people around her. The only thing I can think of is she just used her to babysit her son. If thats the case then I take back my criticism. The creepy past of Anna Kendrick having an incestuous relationship with her half brother and eventually her husband finding that out that leads to both their deaths in an altercation servers only one purpose . It makes our protagonist believable when she is investigating this whole disturbing past and not be just a dumb nerdy workaholic single mother who is at the wrong place at the wrong time because she has gone through some dark stuff and she is smarter than she is letting out to be. I get that. So all in all its a tight script and I enjoyed it.
In a way this can be considered as an origin story for a private detective. A single mom vlogger who gets sucked into a murder mystery , uncovers the mystery with her own skills and realizes that she is highly gifted at this. After the case is closed , she becomes an investigator.
A nerdy single mom becomes friends with a very attractive but mysterious neighbor who is leagues above her in looks department. But one day the mysterious woman disappears and this forces the nerdy mom, our lead to uncover truths about the disappearance.
I enjoyed this movie thoroughly and since it came out this weekend if you are interested to watch it but are on the fence, I suggest you go watch it right now . Only asterisk her is if you are into the sensibilities of Paul Feig as a director. This is a murder mystery and at no point does it try to be a comedy but the comedic moments comes through characters involved in the mystery and those characters have Paul Feig's comedic sensibilities. He does deliver a compelling murder mystery/thriller. Almost all the main characters in the movie has layers to them. Some characters that look innocent are not so innocent and some characters that are vile and quite despicable can't help themselves but be that way. Blake Lively plays the role a pathological liar and femme fatale quite perfectly. Its one of those roles that's comparable to Sharon Stone's character in Basic Instinct. Only difference is that there is no x-rated stuff in this movie. Director cleverly makes almost all the main characters feel like culprits. So, for a while there you feel that the protagonist is somehow involved with the disappearance of Blake Lively and for sometime her husband who is played by Henry Golding feels like culprit.Another important thing that people going into this movie should note is that this is not a David Fincher movie. In David Fincher movies every character has certain darkness to them. There are no black and white characters. The darkness of the characters comes from the scripts, the actors chosen by David Fincher and of course Fincher's direction. But in this movie the script is written for a director like Paul Feig and the actors chosen for the movie are approved by Paul Feig. So you need to know that before going into the movie. The complexity of the characters in this movie are much more compartmentalized and are distinguishable by audience as opposed to a David Fincher movie. For example in Social Network, David Fincher presented Mark Zukerberg as this vile character thats reprehensibly ambitious and who is getting layed in toilet because he is famous. Thats a lot of layers to a character thats supposed to be this great genius. Where as in this movie in one scene we get a comedic/innocent Anna Kendrick and in the next scene we get a smart investigative Anna Kendrick. Thats a compartmentalized portrayal of a character than a complicated character thats walking with all the inner demons in them all at once.You can see the script turning off some of the characteristics of a character and turning on some other characteristics required for the scene in this movie. There are 3 or 4 times in the movie where I wished it had been directed by David Fincher as opposed to Paul Feig so that I could get that dark turn I wanted for the story to take but Paul Feig detours it into some not so dark places.
Key thing you need to understand is that this movie is the cinematic equivalent of the mystery/investigative novels read by housewives. This movie is aimed for middle aged women as I saw a lot of them in the theater. Luckily I went with my girlfriend so I didn't feel like a weirdo sitting by myself in a theater with mostly middle aged women on a girls night. So anyone going for a hardcore mystery will not like it. There is some dark stuff but the movie brings it back to light place quite quickly so that it doesn't loose its key demographic. You are not going to get a movie with grit and feel of something like Seven. But the movie is engaging enough for you to forgive the films unwillingness to go the distance. A much easier way to say about this movie is, there is a joke for almost every 5 minutes of the movie even till the end. So, even during the climax there are jokes in the dialogue. I liked it. However some jokes didn't work in terms of the dialogue.
Spoilers
So the main storyline of the movie involves Blake Lively's sudden disappearance. Initially everyone thinks she just ran off due to financially unsustainable marriage but later her body is found in the bottom of a lake. Due to shared grief between Anna Kendrick and Lively's husband they start an affair. After a while when she decides to move into the house she starts feeling Lively's presence not just imaginarily but even physically. The straw that breaks camel's back is when she receives an envelop through her son's friend aka Lively's actual son which contains a very dark and disturbing information about our protagonist's past which only Lively could have known. The reason for this whole taunting is because Lively , who isn't dead is angered by her husband's affair with Kendrick.
The reveal of the secret behind the identity of the body found in the lake is uncovered by Anna kendrick after she knows for sure Lively is not dead. Director does a very layered approach to the investigation. I liked it so much. It almost feels like her investigation is leading her deeper and deeper into the distrubing past of Blake lively's character. Blake Lively as I said is a very disturbing and exploitative character. She is the kind of girl that you hear about in the news that is murdered by her husband for having an affair. I always wondered how guys can be so dumb in judging the character of certain kind of women. I can only presume you will see lot of such women in Los Angeles because only so few of them make it to the top that the rest of them have to find a source of income to live and they use sex as a power play to make money. So Blake Lively's character is a parasite and she is born "evil". During the first layer of investigation Anna kendrick through a nude painting of Blake Lively tracks down its painter. As I said she is a parasite and also happens to be a bi sexual. So she scams the painter for a lot of money under the pretext of a sexual relationship and vanishes. The painter seems like one of those nice people who believes the best in people and moves on if life screws them over. So she moved on from Blake lively's betrayal. Linda Cardellini plays that role so well. She is tough in appearance but not at heart. So Blake lively was able to scam her. From there Anna Kendrick's investigation goes a layer deeper. She finds out Blake Lively's original identity and tracks down her address and sees her mom in a rather tension filled sequence. You could see the impact of Blake Lively's disturbing actions during her teenage years in her mother. Her mother is living a sad and depressed life.Through her , she learns that Lively's character has a twin and together they kill their father by burning the house down at a very young age due to some fight in the family. That forces them to run away from the house and split because twin killers are easy to track down if they stay together. We follow one sister who stays in America as the other sister movies to Mexico and becomes a drug addict. One the day of her disappearance she goes to visit her long last junkie twin who starts black mailing her for 1 million dollars. So Blake Lively cooks up a plan to kill two birds with one shot. So she kills her twin sister faking her own death and once her husband gets the insurance money due to her death she will join him and they can live together. But those plans are slightly spoiled by Anna Kendricks interference and ultimately Anna Kendrick orchestrates a sting to make Lively confess for her crimes.
Henry golding is perfect as a guy stuck between these two women. The movie cleverly shows how even attractive guys like Henry are not immune to the charms and scams of someone as vile and as attractive as Blake Lively. That was so great because the movie could have easily followed the route of showing the pair as a mismatched couple where Lively's character is too good looking and her husband is way below her league. But Paul Feig wanted the pair to look like a believable couple. I liked how no 2 characters are in complete honesty with each other. Blake Lively has got her husband wrapped around her finger and she is the perfect embodiment of femme fatale in any movie ever. Her character was written so well. It almost feels like one of those supermodels who switch between dating celebrities or increase the profile of men they date with time as they themselves get more and more famous.One of the scenes towards the end of the movie is another gem. There is a point in the story when Anna Kendrick had to choose between siding with Lively's character and blame her husband for forcing his wife to fake her own death so they can get the insurance money or side with husband to perform a sting on Lively as make her confess. By this point she realizes that Lively is a pathological liar and her husband didn't ever love Anna Kendrick. So she has reason to hate both of them. But she choose to side with the husband and expose Lively. I am not sure how much of it has to do with the findings from her own investigation that uncovered the evil of Lively's character and how much of it has to do with how a female mind works and not wanting to let a woman getaway with what she has done to her husband. But nonetheless it was a very good storyline.
The gripe I had with the movie was there are many scenes where the movie could have gone deeper and darker with certain storylines. Blake Lively could have executed her disappearance plan much more carefully. After all , she is a skillful parasite and femme fatale. Her move to taunt Anna Kendrick ultimately became the bane of her existence. Had she not done that , Anna Kendrick wouldn't have investigated her background. Even her plan to fake her death to get the insurance money of 4 million was so spontaneous. She never planned on killing her sister until she met her. Its little hard to believe that she cooked up this whole plot in a matter of seconds. To use the millions of insurance money she must have to either disappear with her whole family. That would have been a very suspicious getaway plan. I also didn't get how Anna Kendrick fits into the whole exploitative nature of Blake lively. From her past we know that she used lot of people around her. The only thing I can think of is she just used her to babysit her son. If thats the case then I take back my criticism. The creepy past of Anna Kendrick having an incestuous relationship with her half brother and eventually her husband finding that out that leads to both their deaths in an altercation servers only one purpose . It makes our protagonist believable when she is investigating this whole disturbing past and not be just a dumb nerdy workaholic single mother who is at the wrong place at the wrong time because she has gone through some dark stuff and she is smarter than she is letting out to be. I get that. So all in all its a tight script and I enjoyed it.
In a way this can be considered as an origin story for a private detective. A single mom vlogger who gets sucked into a murder mystery , uncovers the mystery with her own skills and realizes that she is highly gifted at this. After the case is closed , she becomes an investigator.