Review| A Simple Favor: The Devil in a Dress
Let me start by saying that I’m not a big fan of director Paul Feig. The films of his I have seen have come off as funny in parts but are more often derivative, overly crass, lazy, and in the case of his 2016 reboot/remake/whatever of Ghostbusters, stupid and downright insulting. So my hopes going into A Simple Favor were not high.
However, Feig did something I wasn’t expecting with this film. He actually surprised me…and for that I applaud him. A Simple Favor is an intriguing mystery that keeps the viewer engulfed in the story until the very last scene. I liked it quite a bit. It isn’t the best movie of the year, but it was entertaining and worth my time.
Like all good stories, A Simple Favor reveals much about the nature of humanity. The characters grapple with temptation and the consequences of their questionable actions. The temptation to do wrong is something to which we all can relate—especially because it is driven by our eternal adversary.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The Good – A Modern Hitchcock
It was clear within the first moments of A Simple Favor that Paul Feig was evoking the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock with his first thriller. It was a wonderful marriage of Hitchcockian sophistication and modern flair, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The master’s common hallmarks emerge throughout the film. There are scenes where dialogue about sex, murder and other felonious behavior are discussed over food. The camera angles and shots have a meticulously crafted quality. The film’s advertising campaign and opening titles had a mid-century modern style to them, reminiscent of the work of designer and Hitchcock collaborator Saul Bass. Even the music by Theodore Shapiro echoes the trademark tension of Hitch’s greatest composer, Bernard Herrmann.
In any other situation, I would consider what Feig did as derivative. However, Feig has put a modern spin on Hitchcock tropes, which is more of an homage than outright copying. It proves that Hitch’s trademarks are just as effective today as they were when the master himself was employing them beginning almost a century ago.
Within this modern thriller are some stellar performances by the three principles – Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, and Henry Golding. Kendrick is very good at playing the “girl-next-door” type and has a talent for conveying innocence and naivete, which makes her character’s fall all the more tragic. Lively is just as icy and conniving as any of the “Hitchcock blonde” femme fatales of the past. And Golding, fresh from his great performance in Crazy Rich Asians, is exceptional as the man caught in the middle.
The Bad – An Awkward Tone
Just when I think Paul Feig has grown as a filmmaker and crafted something completely different with A Simple Favor, he inserts annoying little Feig-isms to remind me that Feig is still Feig and he can’t help it.
These Feig-isms came in the form of awkward comedic moments that broke the tension and suspense of a scene almost immediately. These gags would have worked well in a Feig-directed Melissa McCarthy raunch-fest, but A Simple Favor is trying so hard not to be that. And it’s not dark humor, either—something that Hitchcock was exceptional at doing—because that would not have broken the tone of the film.
They were anything from obviously ad-libbed dialogue riffs that seemed to never end, cute kids inexplicably dropping f-bombs, unnecessary jabs at masculinity, or a girl’s pink umbrella being tossed in the wind like a tumbleweed through Lively’s introductory shot—making no sense whatsoever. It was apparent that Feig just couldn’t stick with a tone.
One particularly glaring scene came at the end of the film when all had been revealed and Emily (Lively) was about to shoot Stephanie (Kendrick). After a few moments of character-driven tension, Emily was comically dispatched by being hit by a car with cartoon-like abandon. The driver was one of Stephanie’s metrosexual male friends (another hallmark of Feig), who then mugged for the camera and uttered a comedic catchphrase. All of the exceptional suspense and satisfaction was immediately destroyed.
It Starts with “a Simple Favor”
A Simple Favor is about the relationship between Stephanie, her supposed best friend Emily, and Emily’s aloof husband Sean. The film’s mystery was wrapped up in Emily herself, with her disappearance and death setting off Stephanie’s deeper dig into her sophisticated facade. As the mystery unfurls and Emily is revealed to still be alive, her diabolical machinations come to the forefront and test the integrity of both Sean and Stephanie.
Emily’s cunning and manipulative nature immediately reminded me of how Satan operates on earth. Ever since the Garden of Eden, our eternal adversary’s main way of corrupting humanity has been to pull at our fleshly weaknesses and natural sin patterns. With both Stephanie and Sean, Emily had personal ways to manipulate them, causing both of them to do things they knew were wrong.
“A man’s disposition on the inside…determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted and reveals the possibilities of their nature. Every man has the setting of his own temptation, and the temptation will come along the line of the ruling disposition.”
—Oswald Chambers
For Sean, it was a truly physical temptation. Emily left him with an insatiable, fleshly curiosity that he seemed to not be able to resist. His fall began in the very beginning of their relationship when Emily stole Sean’s mother’s ring, and Sean let it slide rather than doing the right thing and returning it. That allowed Emily an inroad into Sean’s psyche; her flesh could make him do or say anything.
Emily appealed to Stephanie’s emotional weaknesses. She was the woman Stephanie desired to be: worldly, confident, beautiful, well-dressed, and married to a successful man (even though there were things that struck Stephanie as odd, like perverse art hanging up in the house). As Stephanie let Emily in emotionally, Emily took advantage of Stephanie’s helpful nature. Stephanie then began to leave herself open to manipulation and emotional attack. She even revealed one of her biggest sins to Emily, which Emily latched on to and used as a weapon later in the film.
Emily began the corruption process with something small and seemingly innocent. But that “simple favor” became one of many. Sin often begins with a small infraction and then leads to a snowball of corruption that rolls out of control until the consequences consume one’s spirit. This is also how Satan and his demons get into people’s lives and corrupt them.
At the end of A Simple Favor, neither Stephanie nor Sean were really in a state of redemption or triumph. The former came the closest, but her character still became irreparably corrupted in the process. Unless we are protected by the Holy Spirit, we as sinful human beings are often susceptible to the temptations brought on by the evil one and his minions. And these transgressions have consequences both earthly and eternal consequences. In a purely secular world like A Simple Favor, there is no hope of staving off temptation and sin.
But God gave us a way to navigate through the muck by sending Jesus Christ as our advocate, savior, and ultimate example. Jesus Himself was tempted by Satan through the weakness of His earthly form. During His 40 days in the desert, Satan tempted Jesus with bread and dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. But Jesus resisted and eventually defeated Satan on the cross, enable us all the follow His example and deliver us from the evil one.
“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is…We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.”
—C.S. Lewis
The Final Word
In the advertising campaign, A Simple Favor is touted at as being “from the dark side of Paul Feig.” And this tagline is pretty spot on. The film is a great mystery that keeps the viewer guessing throughout the whole film. But Paul Feig’s penchant for immature humor (as funny as that can be, don’t get me wrong) gets in the way of the film’s tension, preventing it from becoming something truly great.
Like Emily’s corrupt machinations, the Devil will often use our personal sin patterns and weaknesses to knock us off of our path toward God (his ultimate goal)—condemning us to wallow in our sin. If we accept Him, Jesus can help us fight these temptations, but only if we truly allow Him complete dominion over our lives. Only He can help us resist Satan’s empty promises, temptations, and lies.
“Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.”
—Hebrews 2:18
