Review: “Another Simple Favor” has lots to enjoy!

Was invited to a preview screening of Another Simple Favor this week which provided an opportunity to see the movie on the big screen with an audience – the way movies like this should be seen.

It premiered on Amazon Prime Video today and I highly recommend this at times very funny film which features a hilarious performance by the great Allison Janney as Aunt Linda McLinden that I did not expect and loved! The character is not in the first movie and is a delicious addition. Janney is a hoot and her ultimate fate is something I am still laughing about days later!

Drag star Rhea Litré was our host for the evening and we posed for pics with her outside before she introduced with movie with great flair.

Here’s the basic plot: Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) and Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) reunite on the island of Capri, Italy, for Emily’s extravagant wedding to a rich Italian businessman, which is interrupted by murder and betrayal. Directed by Paul Feig and written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis. It is a sequel to A Simple Favor (2018) with Kendrick, Lively, Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Joshua Satine, and Ian Ho reprise their roles from the first film, with Michele Morrone, Elena Sofia Ricci, Elizabeth Perkins, Alex Newell, and Allison Janney joining the cast.

I had seen the original movie and enjoyed it but frankly didn’t remember some of the details. But it didn’t deter from my enjoyment of this sequel which played more broad, funny and outrageous than the first movie. There are plenty of twists and turns and Lively is as good and glamorous as you would expect in a role that gets far more complicated this time around. But Kendrick is the real gem in the sequel as her character remains calm no matter what is happening around her and to her.

Love that there’s a few queer plot twists and turns and that the cast prominently features queer performers including Newell and Rannells. Perkins makes the role played by Jean Smart in the first movie all her own.

Let me know what you think of the movie!