2025 is shaping out to be the year for sequels to films that were mildly received at the time of release. Just last month saw the release of The Accountant 2, whose precursor was released in 2016 with a fairly mixed reception. Surprisingly enough, its critical reception was much better, scoring 23% more positively on Rotten Tomatoes. Paul Feig’s Another Simple Favor (2025), now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is the next sequel aiming to get this treatment, but will audiences be as favorable as they hope?
Five years following the events of A Simple Favor (2018), Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) still lives in Warfield and continues posting on her online video blog with a shift of focus from family-friendly recipes to solving cold cases all while ex-best friend Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) is still in prison for murdering her twin sister Faith. Attempting to seek closure, Stephanie writes and publishes a book based on what happened with Emily (quite ironic considering the first film was based on a book). During a book reading, old wounds are slashed open when Emily shows up, leaving prison early and asking Stephanie to be her maid of honor at her wedding in Italy.
Everything about the second installment feels more lavish. The majority of the film is shot on the glamorous island of Capri. From the ravishing wedding at the Grand Hotel Quisisana to the stunning reception at the Lido del Faro, no expense was spared. The costume department got an upgrade too with Feig giving costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus the go-ahead to go all out, especially with Kendrick and Lively with their expensive pieces clearly taking inspiration from the wardrobes of shows like Sex in the City (1998-2004), Gossip Girl (2007-2012) and Emily in Paris (2020-). Ehrlich Kalfus even mentioned that they “took over an entire villa” for the clothes. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that the film got a massive cash injection from the $20 million budget of the first one.
It is unfortunate that the high-end quality ends at that, with the narrative structure of the sequel being nothing more than a reiteration of the first. Both start exactly the same, Stephanie vlogging from roughly halfway (chronologically) in the story’s timeline – recapping to her viewers the events that got her in the situation that she is currently in through a long flashback sequence that we forget is even happening. We are then subjected to a series of narrative twists involving back-stabbing, secret relatives, and murders, each more convoluted than the last.
As a viewer, we are lured to the sequel by the inventive depiction of the classic murder mystery that A Simple Favor gave us, but when you repeat the exact formula for Another Simple Favor without even an attempt to give us a different angle, it loses the charm it had once cultivated. If I wanted a rehash, I would watch the original again.
The biggest letdown of the sequel is managing the mess of how many subplots the audience has to pay attention to at a given time. In the span of this 2-hour runtime, we are forced to make sense of what Emily’s true intentions are with Stephanie, a child custody battle, an Italian mobster conflict, why Emily’s aunt and mother have showed up to the wedding, an unenthused mother-in-law’s antics and, without spoiling too much, so much more. Writers Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis are unable to balance everything going on, making the film bloated rather than fulfilling.
Lively’s portrayal of Emily is very reminiscent of her days as Serena van der Woodenson on
Gossip Girl – vindictive, calculated, and looking stylish whilst doing it. This serves the narrative well, and you can tell she is having a blast channeling that energy back into Emily. However, you can’t help but wonder whether we could have seen real emotional depth and growth in her character rather than a complete replication of the work she did on the first film. Perhaps the writers could have leaned more into her relationship with her son.
On the other hand, Kendrick’s character has shown the biggest growth since the first story. From the innocent, overly bubbly girl-next-door to a more confident, snarky, almost seductive woman, she mirrors what Lively does with Emily. These innocent characters are ones we know Kendrick can ace from the likes of Pitch Perfect (2012) and Up in the Air (2009), but it is a welcome change to see her embrace a femme fatale style role, and I would love to see her take on more roles like this. The quick-witted, sarcastic comebacks add a new layer to Emily and Stephanie’s dynamic, giving at least one fresh perspective to the plot.
There is no denying the electric chemistry between Lively and Kendrick. Their sharp repertoire and the way they effortlessly bounce off one another in every scene make every moment they aren’t together on screen such a bore. The sexual tension between them is even more palpable than it was previously, so much so that they even allude to it at points in the film, yet it is never acted upon.
This becomes very frustrating as you can clearly see that both of these characters have a relationship that isn’t quite satisfied by the label of ‘friends’, so why not experiment with it more in the romantic avenue? It’s 2025, we don’t have to be shy about a sensually charged relationship between two women.
The same high and low points of the sequel are seen in the first film, and this is deliberate. Nowadays, there cannot be an original IP film with a low budget that does moderately well without studios clamoring on top of it, desperately banking on the idea that audiences will show up if they squeeze another sequel out of it. So, what was the point in making this other than it being a poor attempt at a cash grab?
Disappointingly, Another Simple Favor does everything right and everything wrong that its predecessor did. Feig is unable to grasp what it takes to make a sequel like this work in a meaningful way. Let’s hope that by the time he makes a third one, as he has stated he would very much be open to it, he’ll figure it out.
Review Courtesy of Nandita Joshi
Feature Image Credit to Amazon MGM Studios