A Simple Favour (2018 Paul Feig)

Let's start with Anna Kendrick. She seems to me to be someone slightly difficult to cast. 50 / 50 and Up In the Air have been her best films, in both of which she's trying to learn her job better and develop empathy at the same time. I don't really buy her cutesy dancing or brandishing a revolver  (though the Mums' Vlog is right).

This film - like Gone Girl, also based on a novel (this one by Darcey Bell) - is all about the plot. Here's some things it doesn't have: humour, atmosphere, suspense, style, beauty, empathy (the kids are barely present). Blake Lively plays her character right - caustic, brittle, unlovely - when she later says how much she loves her son, you don't buy it at all. Her feckless husband Henry Golding starts screwing other women the minute she is dead. So we don't feel particularly sympathetic towards anyone.

So it all sort of rests on the mechanics of the plot and the surprise ending. And once you've experienced those, I'm not sure there's a lot left. John Schwartzman is a good cameraman (see Seabiscuit as evidence), though I didn't remark on anything exciting going on here, and some of the editing seemed a bit suspicious.

We liked Andrew Rannells as one of the bitchy 'mums' (we had met him before in Girls and The Intern) and Bashir Salahuddin as the slightly sarcastic detective. Whilst always welcome, Rupert Friend has a non-role that could have been usefully excised. Jessica Sharzer wrote it (American Horror Story producer / writer).

Don't fuck about with a Martini.