A Simple Favor is a mad mash of genres
What evil lurks behind the mommy vlogger with an "oopsie jar"?
Paul Feig's A Simple Favor is a suburban noir about two mothers with grade-school kids that veers into Gone Girl territory before turning more sinister still, and heading for the darker realm of Diabolique. It's an often lighthearted, sometimes creepy journey through the female stereotypes of the genre, with Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively as guides who both delight in and subvert traditional noir archetypes.
How good that sounds on paper. But Feig's A Simple Favor, adapted by Jessica Sharzer from Darcey Bell's 2017 novel, is a genre mash-up that fluctuates in such haphazard extremes that Feig never finds solid footing for his performers in his film's heightened, derivative reality.
