A Simple Favor

Dir: Paul Feig

2018

*

In recent years director Paul Feig has been heralded by some as some sort of saviour of feminist film. Bridesmaids was over-hyped as an important film that finally saw the girls playing the boys at their own game. It wasn’t, it was just a funny comedy that was somewhat spoiled by the aforementioned hype. Revolutionary films don’t usually sell themselves as ‘Revolutionary’ films anyway, they usually just get released, hope for the best and let the audience decide. You need people for a revolution to decide if it is one of not, you can’t just state it. Also, you need to actually do something that hasn’t been done before and be, well, revolutionary. To be fair Feig has never claimed to be a feminist revolutionist but he rode that wave after Bridesmaids came out and did back flips during the promotion of his remake of Ghostbusters. The whole Ghostbusters debate was mind-numbing and got pretty tiresome. It is old school studios/producers who still think women and black people can’t sell cinema tickets, not the audience. It is old school studios/producers who still think women (who make up 51.5% of the global population) are a minority. Again, not the audience. Give an audience a good film and they will see it, as long as they know about it and it’s not subtitled that is. Some people saw Ghostbusters as another big step forward for women in film – which was ridiculous. If anything it was a big step back as it was a terrible reboot of a loved cult classic. There were many, like myself, who though the film was going to fail because it was a reboot of a great film and for no other reason. It could have been remade with male actors, it really didn’t matter, although suggesting it was a positive thing for women made it a thing. The idea that you must be sexist to not have approved of the idea before the release of the film made being an online film reviewer rather unpleasant for a good few months. I wanted to say it was just the kids who were getting upset about it but it wasn’t, it was idiots of all ages. Anyway, Feig clearly moved on and so shall I. That said, the people who saw Ghostbusters as some form of feminist victory are probably the same people who think that A Simple Favor is some form of film-noir. Stylish clothes, a modern house and a mysterious death don’t automatically make a film a noir, just as having an all female cast doesn’t automatically make a film an act of feminism. The poster for A Simple Favor hints that the film is something of a neo-noir but it isn’t and the poster remains the most successful element of the production. To accentuate the contrast between the scary and the funny, Feig made the decision to shoot the movie like a brightly-lit comedy. "Thrilling things happen in the daylight rather than in darkly lit rooms. In the suburbs, there's not a lot of hiding among the white walls and bright windows." He’s not wrong, Mary Harron used the same technique to great effect in 2000’s American Psycho. Feig doesn’t have a fraction of Harron’s skill or talent, he can’t do dark, he can’t do light and he can’t do contrast. Nothing thrilling comes out of his rather ordinary ‘suburban white walls’ and I call bullshit on the emperor's new cloak. Mary Harron is a real feminist film maker by the way who is still to this day overlooked and under appreciated. The fact that more people have discussed the Ghostbusters remake than any of her films is sad. A Simple Favor is a simple imitation of other great films. It stars Anna Kendrick as an exaggerated version of herself, or at least the character she now seems to play in all her films. Her character is basically a mix of Amy Adam’s Julie Powell (Julie & Julia) and Single White Female. The film is essentially Single White Female except the bad guy is now the good guy and the good guy is now the bad guy. Unfortunately no one gets it in the eye with a stiletto. The old illusionists trick of using a twin to pull off a trick is the films twist but you can see it from a mile away and anyway, it features in the films trailer so this isn’t a spoiler. If you want a spoiler though check this out: *Spoiler* - This film is crap. Again, this is hinted at in the trailer. The film is crammed full of pointless sub-plots that don’t go anywhere and often feels like a mix of different ideas that don’t belong with one another have just been thrown together at the last minute. I feel sorry for Blake Lively who obviously thought she was given the femme fatale role of a lifetime. She gives it her all but her performance is lost in the fog. I don’t dislike Anna Kendrick but I disliked her character and I do wonder how much longer she can play the same person. I hated the script quite a lot. I didn’t understand why Kendrick’s character had to sleep with her brother either, or why the film was ever marketed as a black comedy. I’m not sure what annoyed me the most, I suppose it was Feig’s ineptitude in general but the continuity crimes are probably the worst thing about the film. The timelines don’t match up when Kendrick’s character is talking to her vlog audience – if featuring a vlog element to the film wasn’t bad enough. Classic niors often have narration from the main character but having it via blog is a cheap and nasty modern phenomena that can quite frankly get in the sea as far as I’m concerned. The other continuity crime that didn’t go unnoticed was towards the end of the film when Kendrick’s character and her son move back to their old house – which they had sold earlier on in the film. Sure they could have bought it back but they didn't, this was a mistake. The big slap in the face error though was saved till last. When the story reaches its finale and the main character confront each other, Lively is hit by a car (thus saving Kendrick) that is driven by a minor (and rather pointless) character who we see being arrested for drug usage in the previous scene. Why this character is arrested for drug use is unknown, it adds nothing to the story and comes from nowhere. How he then manages to drive his car into Lively when he’s actually in prison is unclear. He supposedly sees everything unfold on Kendricks vlog but even if he is released soon after taking drugs/being arrested for taking drugs, is watching her vlog really the first thing he would do? He wasn’t watching it when he was taking drugs as he was too busy taking drugs. Smoking drugs kills brain cells, I wonder whether Paul Feig smokes drugs? It’s a poorly constructed patchwork quilt of better ideas with loads of holes in it. This is how not to make a film but somehow it was successful because people have become bored of thinking. Is it a question of taste? Maybe it is. I have been known to dip cake in mustard for example, so what do I know about fine dining? However, if I spill mustard on my shirt I wipe it off, dab it with a wet cloth and stick it in the washing machine. I don’t set fire to my feet. You may think that is a stupid thing to say, and you’d probably be right, but you’re stupid, A Simple Favor is stupid, everyone who likes it is stupid and Paul Fieg is an amateur golfer who thinks he's John McEnroe.