Stephanie Smothers has become a minor celebrity ever since she helped put her former friend (and double murderer), Emily, behind bars five years earlier. And that was no fluke, either. Turns out, Stephanie is quite the detective, helping the police solve several more crimes all while raising her teenage son and managing a successful mommy vlog.
Now, she can add “author” to that impressive resume, having penned a book about her near-deadly experience with Emily. She’s out promoting the book when she receives a twist worthy of a good mystery thriller. Who should walk through the door but Emily herself?
It seems Emily secured an early release from prison thanks to her husband-to-be’s crack team of lawyers. Stephanie is sure Emily wants revenge.
But what Emily actually wants is …
… Stephanie to be the maid of honor at her wedding on the beautiful Italian isle of Capri.
What?
To hear Emily tell it, despite their complicated history, she still considers Stephanie her best—maybe only—friend.
Though Stephanie’s not entirely convinced that this isn’t a ruse, she agrees to Emily’s simple favor and is whisked away to Capri. Once there, Stephanie meets all the players: Dante Versano, Emily’s new beau and a man with some questionable business interests—the “cement shoes” and “sleeping with the fishes” kind. There’s Dante’s disapproving mother. The rival Bartolo Family. Emily’s mother and Aunt Linda. Nicky, Emily’s son, and his father Sean—Emily’s ex-husband and Stephanie’s former lover.
It’s a tangled web of dysfunction and strife. If looks could kill, everyone at this wedding would be goners. So, as you might imagine, it doesn’t take long for the bodies to start piling up for real.
Stephanie is determined to discover the culprit, and her list of suspects has the enigmatic-as-ever Emily squarely on top. Has her friend gone back to her murderous ways? Or is a new killer on the loose?
It’s going to take all of Stephanie’s sleuthing powers to find out and, hopefully, get out of Capri alive.
Stephanie is a dedicated mother who cares for her son. When people are murdered, she works to discover the culprit even when it may put her in danger. Someone charitably agrees to raise a child who has lost both of his parents.
Emily’s mother has dementia, and some of her ramblings take on a spiritual bent. She calls Nicky a “child of Satan,” and claims that someone sent a person’s soul to hell. She also believes God brought a dead person back to life to deliver His wrath to those close to Emily.
A priest officiates a wedding. Several women wear jewelry that include crosses.
Another Simple Favor is an incredibly vulgar movie, pervaded with sexual content. In a flashback, a woman drugs and sexually assaults another woman. (Believe it or not, this is disturbing encounter is almost immediately used to serve a joke.) A man masturbates, and we see several shots of his bare backside. Two men are in a secret homosexual relationship. Women share kisses. Emily and Dante kiss passionately.
To say much of the film’s dialogue is merely suggestive gives too much credit. Characters talk about sex constantly, and we hear crass references to sexual acts. There are several mentions of Stephanie’s incestuous relationship with her late half-brother—a plot point in 2018’s A Simple Favor. The sexual history between Stephanie, Emily and Sean comes up frequently.
Stephanie is told that crime is her “kink.” A man tells his (young) daughter to not get pregnant at summer camp and tells Stephanie’s son not to impregnate anyone. Women wear tight, sometimes very revealing clothing. Stephanie helped expose a pedophile through her amateur sleuthing.
We see nude, Romanesque statues—one shot lingers on a statue’s privates.
A man gets injected with a poison that causes him to bleed from his eyes, ears, mouth and nose before expiring. Another character is shot and pushed off a cliff. Someone is shot several times before being blown up. A woman is smothered to death. Another is stabbed. A person forces another to cut them, and we see a little blood. A child is held at gunpoint.
Emily is a borderline sociopath. She talks about killing Stephanie and others, and it’s hard to get a read on her true intentions. During her wedding ceremony, Emily wears a white gown with a train that is made to look like it’s been soaked in blood.
We see flashbacks of Stephanie’s confrontation with a pedophile—he points a gun at her before taking his own life, and we see blood spatter on a wall. A mother says that one of her triplets was strangled in the womb and was later cremated. Someone fights a pair of mob henchmen, rendering them unconscious. People are threatened with guns. A person is struck by a small drone.
And … we’re not quite done with the violence just yet. A character talks about a brain aneurysm. We hear that a man’s father died when he was young. A bird crashes into a sliding glass door and dies. Cars nearly crash on a narrow road. Someone uses violent imagery to describe giving birth. We hear that the Roman emperor Tiberius would throw those who failed to entertain him from the edge of one of Capri’s cliffs.
We hear more than 70 uses of the f-word, many of those utterances directly referencing the sexual act (one of which comes from a child). The s-word is heard more than 15 times. Jesus’ name is misused eight times. There are more than 20 misuses of God’s name, frequently paired with “d—.” Additionally, we hear uses of “h—,” “b—h,” “d–k,” “a–,” “a–hole,” “bada–” and several crude terms for male and female anatomy.
Emily and Stephanie share several martinis. Sean drinks constantly and appears drunk at times. Characters drink wine or gin. Others toast with champagne. Someone mentions that Hunter S. Thompson was addicted to cocaine. Stephanie apparently helped bust a meth lab that was operating from a senior center. A man is concerned people will think his friend is “smoking pot.” People are injected with different serums throughout the film; one character receives a dose of “truth serum” during questioning.
Several of Stephanie’s friends pressure her to go to Capri with Emily, despite the apparent danger. One of the ways Emily “encourages” Stephanie to come is by threatening to sue her. (Stephanie used Emily’s likeness in her book without her permission.)
Stephanie’s son gets expelled from camp after taking a ski boat on a joyride. Emily’s mother says she wanted her daughter sterilized. Dante’s mother is quick to insult everyone she meets. The police on Capri are comfortably in the Versano Family’s pocket and turn a blind eye to the clan’s criminal dealings. People are blackmailed. Others are framed for crimes they didn’t commit. A woman talks about vomiting.
In Plugged In’s review of 2018’s A Simple Favor, we said, “[The film] delivers … twists and turns around a gripping plot. But despite some compelling cinematic moments, what we end up with here is basically Gone Girl-lite. Whereas that thriller was completely submerged in explicit sexual content and graphic violence, this one doesn’t dive quite so deeply into those problematic waters. But it wades into them far enough to warrant more than a simple warning from us.”
The same could be said for the sequel, Another Simple Favor. The movie is built around an intriguing, layered mystery. Blake Lively gives a charismatic performance, equal parts charm and menace. And the island of Capri makes for a dazzling film locale. There’s even a hint of a positive message here: that people can change, and for the better.
But Another Simple Favor has content problems like Capri has summer sunshine. There is violence. Nudity. Sexual situations are discussed frequently and flippantly. (This is a movie that makes running jokes out of incest and infidelity, after all.) The film is packed with suggestive and/or crude dialogue. Several characters abuse alcohol.
So, is Another Simple Favor worth it? For those concerned about the content issues listed above, I would simply suggest that you do yourself a favor: Don’t watch it.
Bret loves a good story—be it a movie, show, or video game—and enjoys geeking out about things like plot and story structure. He has a blast reading and writing fiction and has penned several short stories and screenplays. He and his wife love to kayak the many beautiful Colorado lakes with their dog.
