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A new trailer for Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick‘s black comedy Another Simple Favor shows the frenemies traveling to a wedding in Capri, Italy, where they get sucked into another mysterious web of murder and betrayal. The film debuted at South by Southwest on March 7 and will come to Amazon Prime on May 1.
The original A Simple Favor hit theaters in 2018. It centered around a single mother, Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick), who grows close to Emily Nelson (Lively), a wealthy socialite, after their young sons become good friends. When Nelson disappears, Smothers spearheads an effort to find her, only to uncover dark secrets from her friend’s past. Spoiler alert…It ends with Nelson getting sentenced to 20 years in jail for double murder, and Smothers becoming a successful vlogger/detective.
This isn’t a natural setup for a sequel, but the film earned rave reviews and racked up nearly $100 million on a $20 million budget, making a second chapter practically inevitable. Another Simple Favor took seven years to come together, and reunites original director Paul Feig with Lively and Kendrick alongside returning stars Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Joshua Satine, and Ian Ho. They are joined by Michele Morrone, Elena Sofia Ricci, Elizabeth Perkins, Alex Newell, and Allison Janney.
The new trailer shows Smothers reading an excerpt from her book to a live audience when Nelson marches in. “Emily!” says a stunned Smothers. How are you here?”
“I’m getting married,” she responds. “Will you be my maid of honor? Did I mention it’s in Capri?”
Nelson somehow talks her into flying off to Italy with her on a private jet, even though the events of the first movie proved that she’s a manipulative, murderous psychopath with a clear motive of revenge. And once they arrive, of course, chaos erupts, and a dead body surfaces. Smothers has to once again crack the mystery.
Early reviews for the film have been somewhat mixed, though it has an 81 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “So much of the first movie’s success was a result of the tension between Stephanie’s naivety and Emily’s mysteriousness, and the sequel inevitably loses some of both thanks to the fact that these women have now known each other for almost a decade and covered up multiple crimes together,” writes IndieWire’s Christian Zilko. “But Another Simple Favor is able to mask most of that with a ‘make it up in volume’ approach to insanity, and it’s easy to see this series carry on as an enjoyably ludicrous store brand White Lotus travel anthology. A day might soon come when there’s no meat left on the bone of Emily and Stephanie’s relationship, but for now, the Simple Favor series is the closest thing moviegoers have to a true daytime soap opera.”
