Another Simple Favor (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

There's something to be said for the kind of sequel that takes the best-loved parts of an original story, usually key characters (or actors) and glamorous or silly or sexy plot points, and ships them to exotic international places. Think of murder mysteries with Poirot or Jessica Fletcher; think of family adventures like Herbie or spy thrillers with Ethan Hunt; heck, think of road pictures with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby or Abbott and Costello. Rian Johnson is doing it with Benoit Blanc and Steven Rowley is doing it with Guncle Patrick. I certainly didn't expect it from any follow-up to Paul Feig's sleazy, cutesy romp through thick suburban psychology in A Simple Favor, but if that's what he wants to give us, I'm willing to buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Five years after the events of the first film, Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is still touring with her book, but it's clear sales are dropping and her fans want a follow-up. As if on cue, Emily (Blake Lively) returns in her signature stylish fashion, released on appeal from prison and freshly engaged, asking and coercing Stephanie to be her maid of honor. The lucky man, it turns out, is Dante Versano (Michele Morrone), a wealthy Italian man whose family has close ties to organized crime. Eager to renew interest in her vlog and book -- and to gather new material for a real-time sequel -- Stephanie agrees, and the cast sets off to Capri for a sun-drenched romp in the Mediterranean. Feig knows what we want in a sequel, so the costumes and scenery are intensified almost to distraction, and the plot becomes too convoluted for any simple description. In other words, things get very pretty and very messy.

The energy of Another Simple Favor is wildly different from the first; I'd compare its tonal shift to that between seasons of the series The Flight Attendant, with the first being more psychological and the second being more spectacular. Comedic elements here are both more contrived and more forced, but it's never unwelcome; the screenwriters perhaps watched too many classic-Hollywood ensemble comedies during their writing sessions, as zany antics threaten to overtake the plot at every turn. Too, a thematic concern here: the first film took an incisive look at motherhood in a digital age and interrogated what it means for a woman to be successful and a mother and, maybe both, whereas this sequel attempts to question the relationship between identity, loyalty, and criminality, with distinctly diminishing payoff. I'm still rather confused by what, if anything, this film is actually saying, because I was so enamored with its visuals to care much about its theming.

The soapy drama never disappoints, though, and the ensemble clearly enjoys bringing it to life. Henry Golding returns as Sean with some delicious drunken one-liners aimed at both his exes. Emily's mother Margaret is recast from Jean Smart to Elizabeth Perkins, though she isn't given much to do here, and Allison Janney joins the company as Emily's Aunt Linda with a welcome vibe that feels not unlike your own aunt wandering in and causing some ruckus while having a hell of a good time. Unfortunately, none of the new characters are given much to do, so they mostly drift in and out of frame unceremoniously. The camera worships only Kendrick and Lively, as do we, and I confess some frustration at the teased and sorely lacking sapphic subtext from the original; at least they look good and are doing the most to keep attention on themselves. Instead of pining for Emily, now Stephanie is worried about being murdered by her best frenemy. When they split into their own misadventures, the film lags, but their explosive energy together makes it worth the watch.

My personal bias against organized crime flicks -- I just don't care about mafia mania or the dynamics of a looming mob war -- means that I felt at least a third of this film was totally disposable. So many scenes, especially with Dante's family matriarch Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci), could and should have been excised in favor of more tete-a-tetes with the characters we know and care more about, disrupting tea time and bachelorette parties and the marriage of (SPOILER ALERT) convenience. Instead, we're given a story so bizarre and impossible and laughable that it loses itself in the mire it's created; the film's so escapist it forgets that we should also care about these characters as people more than just eye candy. Not that Lively's outfits aren't gobsmacking and Oscar-worthy, I would have just enjoyed more of her torrid family drama and Gone Girl-esque escapades than we got here.

The Prom (2020)

 Score: 5 / 5

The most rousing musical comedy in at least five years has arrived to save us from 2020!

When four washed-up actors on Broadway decide to become relevant again, they naturally take to Twitter to determine a cause worthy of their beneficence. Upon discovering that a rural PTA cancelled prom in protest of a lesbian girl named Emma requesting attendance, they gather their glamor and descend upon a small town in Indiana. Intent on starting a fight for tolerance, they are dismayed that the locals don't appreciate their "zazz" and end up making things worse for Emma. It's not exactly a new tale, and nothing about it is meant to be particularly fresh. But a timeless story is here remade in high fashion with genuine heart, making The Prom one of the best movies of this wretched year.

Ryan Murphy (God's gift to the gays, or perhaps vice versa) helms this prestigious film adapted from the recent Broadway musical by the same writers. It's certainly apparent he's learned a lot since his Glee days, and here the high school musical vibes are less frenetic and more fantastic; that's to say nothing negative about his earlier groundbreaking series, just that he's not recycling old tricks. Murphy's work here reminds me of some other movies that have magnified or even changed the scope and aesthetic of their corresponding stage shows (specifically thinking of Chicago) in that he's not really changing much -- and actually keeping a surprising amount of source material intact -- just adding flair and fantasy elements to heighten the experience. He seems to take his aesthetic inspiration here from recent movie musicals Burlesque and The Greatest Showman in terms of pace, glitter, lights, and emotional beats.

And the show itself is damn good, for having appeared quite suddenly in 2018 on the Great White Way and not doing all that great in only ten months. It's a classic, and not in the oxymoronic "instant classic" sense; it follows the lead of feel-good musical comedies of Charles Strouse or Menken and Ashman, repurposing standard songs (jazz, tango, chorus, anthem) and mashing them into a vaudevillian pastiche. Yes, I'm thinking of Hairspray. Music aside, the story sounds horribly kitsch if you simply describe it, and we (I mean I) tend to feel jaded when confronted with something so beautifully and effectively simple.

Its beguiling good humor and incredibly fast sensibility, though, almost immediately allayed my initial skepticism. The movie is in the best possible hands, and its cast fully commits as much as its production team. Meryl Streep is her usual, impossibly brilliant self, and manages somehow to be even more interesting in the still, quiet moments than in her fiery songs and dance breaks. Nicole Kidman reminds us all that she hasn't aged in decades and deserves so much more spotlight than she ever gets due to her immense talents of voice and body. Andrew Rannells and Keegan-Michael Key (how ridiculously handsome are they?) each deliver slightly understated supporting performances that still steal their respective scenes, and even Kerry Washington has fun and sounds great in her brief moments. James Corden, whatever the gays might say, nails this performance and proves for the first time in many years that he is actually a very talented actor as well as singer.

And then there's the two young women at the emotional heart of this movie and each delivers above and beyond, remarkable in a film with so many huge names. And while I might wish the story were more nuanced and complicated, and that some of the songs hadn't been shortened for time, The Prom is everything we could have wanted and more. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if future (read: post-pandemic) productions of The Prom take primary inspiration from Murphy's movie. This is the candy-colored, flame and flair, razzle-dazzled, glorious kind of movie musical we all want, and it's the kind we all need right now.

The Boys in the Band (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

The devastating brilliance of The Boys in the Band is back in a big way with its newest incarnation, which debuted on Netflix recently. This production has been lifted directly from its brief Broadway revival in 2018, including its entire cast and director, and though its stagey delivery will surely invite criticism from some, it allows those of us who enjoy the theatre to experience something of what we might see on stage. With most responsible theatre groups still shut down these days, heaven knows we needed something like this. (And of course Hamilton, but that's been on repeat all summer!)

It's one of the defining dinner-party-gone-wrong dramas, and remarkably noteworthy for many reasons. Mart Crowley's original off-Broadway play premiered in 1968 and was groundbreaking for portraying a group of gay men authentically. They weren't isolated, and they weren't a trope: the villain, the victim, the sidekick. They weren't even heroic, which wouldn't happen yet for many years. The entire play explores their lives in a way that, now, feels like a perfect experience dropped into a time capsule: only the next year, which brought the Stonewall riots, changed queer urban culture forever. Not long after, as AIDS claimed the lives of thousands, gay art grew urgent, preachy, tragic, and poignant. Because of the intersection of queer lives, mainstream media, and increasing social justice, it's terribly difficult for most young people today to grasp the revolutionary power of The Boys in the Band, even if it wasn't all that well-received in its day.

But it's still a magnificent drama on its own terms, and as long as we let its tempo, language, and profound truths guide us, this new film works wonders on the screen. Thankfully, director Joe Mantello and producer Ryan Murphy avoid any attempts to modernize or dumb-down the original text, making this film as important (if more accessible) than William Friedkin's 1970 film. The play doesn't need to be topical because it will always be relevant, and the artists here trust the work to stand on its own. With only a few added moments to make this feel less like it was shot on stage, the film takes place almost entirely within one character's apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side. What begins as a not-quite-surprising birthday party turns into a night of chaos as the characters drink, play games, and reveal awful truths about themselves and each other.

Jim Parsons plays Michael, the host, whose recent sobriety is put to the test as he prepares for company. His former college roommate Alan has called and wants to visit, but when Michael tells him he's having friends over Alan won't like, Alan breaks into tears (something the very straight character certainly hasn't done before). Michael allows his friend a brief time to come, but before long the gaggle of gays show up and get a little rowdy. It would be easy to classify this bunch of queens as too campy, too effete, too much; but you'd be forgetting that this was a time that their behaviors -- even their identities, as much as the concept existed then -- were strictly illegal. Once in the privacy of a home, they could finally relax and be as flamboyant as they could not in the "real" world. And does that affect their mannerisms? You bet.

You could say the characters are fairly stereotypical, by today's standards, but that washes away the fact that these stereotypes had not yet been cemented as fundamental to queer representation in art. We have effeminate interior decorator Emory, tortured and hunky former lover Donald (who, it is suggested, is undergoing psychoanalysis in an early form of conversion therapy), artist Larry who prefers to sleep around and his live-in boyfriend Hank who is still married to a woman, and finally librarian Bernard, a hopeless romantic and the only black man. We know that, based on the time period and the verbal cruelty of these queers, before long someone will call him the "n" word. And I nearly forgot the guest of honor: Harold, played by a deliciously wicked Zachary Quinto, the lapsed Catholic and alcoholic riddled with a poisonous mix of vanity and malice.

As the night slowly becomes a nightmare, we're locked in the genius world of Eugene O'Neill and Edward Albee, in a party-hell that is as absorbing as it is repugnant. Its grotesquerie reaches a chillingly quiet climax during a particularly nasty party game in which the men take turns calling the one person they've loved the most and telling them. Revelations spiral out of control and the characters are each given chances to dramatically shine; of course the central issue, a now-cliché MacGuffin in which the one most repelled by gay men is probably gay himself, comes to the fore before all ends with tears. Of course, that's not to deny our own devilish pleasure at watching a member of the hegemony get what's coming to him when he is suddenly at the mercy of those he detests. I read that "schadenfreude" was the most-searched vocabulary word after Trump caught the coronavirus. The same concept is dramatic gold here.

If for nothing else, this movie is a delicious drama that perfectly captures real lives lived in a time before what most of us can remember. As such, it can foster lively and enlightening discussions about history, politics, and social justice as easily as it can about friendship, love, truth, and the tragedy of our lives. Boasting memorable performances, beautiful production design, and its timeless script, The Boys in the Band ultimately reminds us all that denying and disguising ourselves can only end with pain, but embracing and building each other up allows us to hope.

A Simple Favor (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Easily the most stylish mystery in ages, A Simple Favor is a beguiling look at the dark secrets in modern relationships. Cast in vibrant hues, the film rejoices in shapes and colors we don't normally associate with the genre, making everything appear at once Instagram-ready. It's a deceptive tactic, those candy-colored extremes, because this film is as noir as they come. In fact, it doesn't take long for the expletives to fly and for the first love-making scene that reveals an unusually hot scene of incest.

Are we moving too fast? Let's back it up.

Anna Kendrick plays Stephanie Smothers, the aptly-named perfect single mother. Immaculately (if gaudily) dressed, always attentive and hardworking, juggling her son with her housewife-themed vlog and all her various voluntary activities. All the other "moms" (including Andrew Rannells) hate her; all, that is, except the one who's never around. That would be Emily (played by Bake Lively), a powerful PR exec from urban glamour. The two women become unlikely friends, starting out a little rocky but escalating quickly to interdependence. Stephanie loves Emily's beautiful life, beautiful clothes, beautiful husband (Henry gorgeous Golding); Emily loves (or at least appears to) Stephanie's cutesy style, hardworking babysitting of their respective sons, and weakness for confessing under the influence.

Sound spooky? Exactly. In what at first seems to be a comedy of manners and clashing lifestyles, the film establishes a rolling banter, a magnificent sort of comedic timing laced with bloodthirsty jabs that I almost want to watch the other comedies that made director Paul Feig famous. However, he did not write this expertly crafted mystery-thriller. That glory belongs solely with Jessica Sharzer of American Horror Story and Nerve fame. Here she has crafted a mystery that, though often feeling familiar in the age of Gillian Flynn and countless crime procedurals, rises above the morass by delving deep into the anxieties between friendship and selfishness in the age of social media.

And while the story's engaging, the performers at their best, and the energy intoxicating, it is the style of this film that remains embedded in mind's eye. Gorgeous costumes that make you want to be the characters and be with the characters. Picture-perfect lives in pristine houses. Gorgeous jazzy French music. Sexy and not afraid of its hidden horrors. Self-knowing and aware of its own manipulations, so much so that it might be laughing at itself or laughing at us, knowing that we're hopelessly caught up in its glorious decadence.

IMDb: A Simple Favor