A Simple Favor plays as a light hearted, suspenseful, comedic, dark drama.  It’s a little of everything while being a lot of nothing.  The tone of the movie goes all over the place while throwing misdirection pieces at you to prevent you from knowing where they were taking this movie.  Without reading the book it is hard to tell if this was how it was written or if it was creative choices made during production.  The plot is good enough to keep you hooked with acting that saves a somewhat slow paced suspense build up.  Overall an interesting story of an unlikely friendship between two moms that ends up in foul play.

Anna Kendrick (Stephanie Smothers) plays that over active mom at the small school who half the moms envy and the other half hate.  She plays the role real well although I would question some of the directions they took this character in.  There are moments that felt out of character and other moments that felt they were constructed merely to throw misdirection.  Blake Lively (Emily Nelson) plays the busy working mom that befriends Anna’s character and really spices things up.  Stunningly tall, blonde, and beautiful, she plays a sharp contrast to Anna’s conservative Old Navy ad-like role.  Henry Golding (Sean Townsend), who was great in Crazy Rich Asians, plays the role of Blake’s husband in a perfect way to know enough about him without really knowing anything.  The supporting cast has some familiar new and old faces but none give a performance worth mentioning and some almost take the movie down a bit.

As a whole A Simple Favor is not a bad movie.  It is an interesting story with quality acting.  There are creative choices to be questioned but it is worth a viewing to form your own opinion on them.  A Simple Favor will work for some but not for others.  It is very much character driven so there is a lot of dialogue and character building.  At times it felt as if scenes were added just to give some needed misdirection but that is hard to know for sure without being in the editing room and haven’t read the book.  It has a lot of adult subject matter but not so harsh a teenage audience couldn’t handle it.  Make your decision to see A Simple Favor based on your opinion of these actors and the feel you get from the trailer.  I doubt however you feel that you will be wrong.