Another Simple Favor (2025)

Another Simple Favor arrives five years after its predecessor, which is roughly the interval required for a streaming-era sequel to be greenlit, filmed in Capri, and deposited on Prime Video with a shrug. Paul Feig returns. Anna Kendrick returns. Blake Lively returns in another architectural wardrobe, and the plot has migrated from suburban motherhood to Italian mafia money. The twists are plentiful. The martinis are cold. The scenery does the heavy lifting whenever the screenplay tires, which is often.

The picture's cultural ambitions are modest and mostly incidental. The ensemble includes Henry Golding, Alex Newell, and a deep bench of Italian performers, though the casting reads as convenience, not conviction. A late revelation turns on Dante's concealed relationship with Matteo and Emily's willingness to serve as his beard, a device that supplies texture without argument. The film is female-led and preoccupied with the thorny friendship between a true-crime vlogger and her glamorous nemesis, yet it never advances a thesis about women, power, or anything else. Wealthy people behave abominably. A prenuptial agreement goes into the flames. Nobody suggests the arrangement itself is the problem.

The film declines to sermonize, and the restraint deserves a small nod of respect. There is no climate lament, no lesson on body image, no parsing of neurodivergence, no revisionist reading of history. The murders are committed for money, for lust, and for the sheer pleasure of impersonation. Nobody stops the action to address the audience about the state of the world. We are left with a competent, faintly tired caper that coasts on Lively's menace and Kendrick's fraying patience. It is a sequel that knows exactly what it is and asks nothing more of us. We have graded it accordingly. The score is low. The martinis remain excellent.