Another Simple Favor (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – Follows Stephanie Smothers and Emily Nelson as they head to the beautiful island of Capri, Italy, for Emily’s extravagant wedding to a rich Italian businessman.

My Take – Released in 2018, director Paul Feig‘s adaption of writer Darcey Bell‘s 2017 novel proved to be an immediate hit with both critics and audiences alike mainly due to its twisted plot, killer fashion, and of course the tremendous chemistry between its leads, Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, that came through very different energies and proved to be equally thrilling and funny.

Now six years later, director Paul Feig and writer Jessica Sharzer, who brings along co-writer Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island), are back with a sequel that reunites the core cast, adds new players and promises yet another stylish roller-coaster of secrets, murder and humor. Particularly by taking its tongue-in-cheek mommy satire to new visual heights by moving the action to coastal Italy.

And while it struggles to match the thrill and wit of the original, it also works well enough as a solid and thoroughly entertaining sequel that deserves far more credit than it has been receiving.

Sure, not every attempt to expand over the original films’ concept is successful, but as an escapist entertainer it’s clever than most. And when it works, especially when Kendrick and Lively are trading barbs and trauma bonding, it works fireworks.

It is kind of dismaying to see how the film is getting buried under the negativity that have stemmed from the controversy and the PR smear campaign surrounding Blake Lively and her upcoming case with her ‘It Ends with Us‘ director and co-star Justin Baldoni. Mainly as this the right kind of ridiculous, fun and campy mess to enjoy on a weekend, even when it’s trying way too hard to out-twist itself.

Set five years after the events of the first film, the story once again follows Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), who has found both success as an investigator and popularity as a true-crime podcaster, but for some reason copies of her self-written memoir about her wild experience with Hope McLanden/Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) aren’t exactly flying off the shelf.

However, she gets quite the shock when Emily appears at her signing event, newly released on appeal with the help of a fresh set of expensive lawyers, and invites Stephanie to be her maid of honor at her extravagant wedding to very rich Dante Versano (Michele Morrone), in Capri, Italy. Though, Stephanie is convinced that she is being made the target of a revenge plot, but upon being coaxed by her literary agent Vicky (Alex Newell), she joins the lavish wedding celebration, hoping to milk her presence for much need publicity for her book and material for a potential sequel.

But upon arrival, she is not only surprised to learn that Dante is the heir to a powerful crime family, but that Sean Townsend (Henry Golding), her and Emily’s ex, has been invited as well. Soon enough, conflicts and emotions begin flaring up all over the place, and bodies eventually start to fall. But this time around, the suspect in the murders ends up being Stephanie.

The narrative picks up with the same sharp wit and ridiculous twists that made the first film so addictive. It’s stylish, playful, and confidently leans into its own absurdity without losing the thread. The principal players are introduced with fun new conflicts and relationships, tension is created as the film successfully keeps the audience in the dark about what lies ahead, and the action is moved to a new and beautiful setting that accents all of the flashy fashion choices.

But the film also suffers from the classic sequel syndrome. In the sense, it is more twisty, but it is also louder, longer, and ultimately a little hollower. While the first film had a sharp wit underneath all the gloss, here a bunch of elements are thrown in just to keep the viewers distracted enough from the glaring plot holes.

When Stephanie gets on the private jet to Italy, surrounded by the ultra-wealthy who think she’s the help, the film is at its high point. The martini-sipping Emily is a devilish mystery, her motives entirely hidden behind stinging one-liners and what may very well be honest expressions of affection for her supposed best friend, and Stephanie having her guard up effectively puts her on her game both in terms of investigative instincts and retorts. Tension boils between the frenemies, as barbs are traded about incest and murders.

But there are a too many plot threads for all of them to pay off, for example a subplot involving Stephanie’s son Miles (Joshua Satine), who conveniently goes away at a no-phones-allowed summer camp and is then supposedly kicked out. And the film’s attempts to outdo its predecessor in intrigue are absurd in a way that’s sometimes fun, and sometimes just bizarre.

Mainly as the script abandons any pretense of grounding its elements and instead embraces the predecessor’s deranged plot twists as the backstabbing deceit this time around grows ever more complex and unhinged. All the while ensuring it delivers on its self-assured baseline pleasures like the gorgeous yet nonsensical setting of Capri, the lush wonders of Renée Ehrlich Kalfus’s costume design and the two leads’ perfectly calibrated banter, at once winking and convincing.

Anna Kendrick once again delivers a charmingly awkward performance and her comic timing remains sharp as a tack. Blake Lively brings the same magnetic presence that made Emily such a standout in the first film. She’s mysterious, unpredictable and utterly confident. A drunk and bitter Henry Golding provides some of the film’s funniest moments, especially when he’s barely holding it together in front of the whole wedding crowd.

In other roles, Allison Janney, Elizabeth Perkins, Andrew Rannells, Elena Sofia Ricci, Alex Newell and Michele Morrone do their due diligence, even if most of them are not realized to their potential. On the whole, ‘Another Simple Favor‘ is a fun but flawed sequel that is more confidently ridiculous and stylishly absurd.