Summer is a good time of year to catch up on things you’ve let fall to the wayside. Maybe it’s a good book, or perhaps a fun game. Maybe you haven’t reviewed anything in nearly a month and want to get back on that horse! Well, now that I’m on vacation, I finally have some time to review some of the movies I haven’t had a chance to talk about yet, at least when I’m not doing other vacation stuff like watching TV and ordering takeout. Will this be a relaxing exercise in extolling the virtues of movies you should see for yourself, or will my time off be filled with bitter resentments at the films that wasted my precious free time? Let’s find out!!
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Friendship
Friendship is owned by A24
Directed by Andrew DeYoung
Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) seems to be living the suburban dream, but the arrival of a new neighbor who takes a shine to him causes him to realize that life can be so much more. Unfortunately, Craig is not what you’d call a suave individual or even that much of a cool dude, and when this new neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd) starts to distance himself from Craig, it leaves a hole in his life that starts to affect his job, his wife Tami (Kate Mara), and his son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) as he tries to find new ways to recapture that feeling of true friendship in increasingly desperate and dangerous ways.
There were few movies I was looking forward to this year more than Tim Robbinson’s uncomfortable examination of male bonding, and there were many reasons for this, not the least of which being that Tim Robbinson is one of the best comedians working today. He understands Millennial anxiety like few others do, and it’s no surprise then that his first major film to follow the success of I Think You Should Leave wound up being one of the most personally affecting comedies of my generation, and certainly pulls the rug out from under everyone else who claims to know what’s wrong with men these days. It’s an issue that we’re constantly hearing about, but few movies have found as genuine a starting point to twenty-first-century malaise quite like this. There was a moment in the first Joker film where our protagonist imagines himself being seen by his favorite comedian, and it was one of the only moments in that allegedly serious-minded exploration of male loneliness and mental illness where I felt it was speaking to something profound and real. This movie is that scene for an hour and a half, only done by a guy who is genuinely funny, and beyond any other value it may have at lending an empathetic voice to the people who could really use a wake-up call, it is a fun film despite how uncomfortable it can be. Tim Robinson isn’t going for the same maniacal energy he does for his Netflix show, but even as a more subdued presence he still has a magnetic energy about him that compels you to pay attention and laugh out loud whenever the tension inevitably breaks, and he’s supported by a cast who understands the assignment and bounces off him in interesting ways. It’s fascinating to watch how everyone in his life treats him like a different person while all still coming to more or less the same conclusion about the guy, and it speaks not only how we present ourselves in different social contexts, but how much of our genuine selves still comes across even when we try to mask it. It’s not a movie that offers a lot of answers, but it gives an uncompromising examination of what’s wrong, which is frankly more than what a lot of people are offering to young men these days. The movie does lose a bit of steam in the second half as the narrative gets a bit unfocused with a couple of scenes that aren’t irrelevant, but do feel more like asides. The one that comes to mind is a sequence with drugs which makes sense as recreational use of drugs as a substitute for therapy is a thing a lot of guys are trying these days, no doubt encouraged by the likes of Joe Rogan, but it comes off as the type of indulgence you often see when sketch comedians, or those writing with them in mind, struggle to shake off when moving to a narrative feature. It also fails to stick the landing for me, which is a shame given how well the rest of the movie handles its subject matter. It’s not a bad ending borne out of incompetence as the film telegraphs its turn into ludicrousness well in advance, but it still feels disconnected from the tone we’ve established. It’s an escalation whose purpose is to give us a memorable ending, but the movie was plenty memorable up until that point and this feels needlessly excessive in a movie that simply didn’t need a big finale; completed with a character verbalizing the themes of the movie in case everything else had gone over your head. It’s a shame that the movie just couldn’t get over the finish line without losing confidence in its own conviction, but I guess a movie about disappointment having a disappointing ending is somewhat on brand.
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Another Simple Favor
Another Simple Favor is owned by Amazon MGM Studios
Directed by Paul Feig
After unraveling the scheme that put Emily (Blake Lively) in jail for murdering her twin sister, Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) has become a celebrity in the true crime sphere and is set to release a book when Emily gets an early release and blackmails Stephanie to be the Maid of Honor at her luxurious Italian wedding. What she finds is a viper’s nest of mafia feuds, bitter ex-husbands, and expected relatives. With such an obvious powder keg ready to go off, all it will take is a single spark, or perhaps a juicy murder, for tensions to break and for accusations to start flying. Will Stephanie find a way out of whatever machinations Emily has planned for her, and is there more to discover on this island than either of them could imagine?
A Simple Favor was one of my favorite movies back in 2018, and part of what made it work is that it felt like a complete story told from beginning to end. Making a sequel to it, especially seven years after the fact, is a risky proposition at best, and it being a straight to streaming venture rather than a full theater release was the canary in the coalmine for this being one of the bad kinds of sequels; not one that finds a unique and interesting adventure for already established characters to go through and perhaps learn something new about themselves, but wallows in the previous film’s existence while taking a luxurious holiday. Everything that made the first movie such a breath of fresh air is, at best, poorly copied over here with the biggest casualty being Stephanie herself; once a shy character thrust into an unreasonable situation and finding a depth of strength within her to come out on top is basically an uninvited guest to an extended mafia drama with nothing better to do than make snide remarks. I suppose it’s a sign of her continued growth as a character that she doesn’t let herself be walked all over, but in taking all the conflict out of her, it has to externalize the conflict much more heavily, hence the inclusion of crime families and corrupt police to stand in her way for extremely contrived reasons. None of this is to say that this setup couldn’t have worked as the film is well shot, the actors are still charming to watch even with a much worse script to work from, and there are moments where the mystery starts veering off into some interesting directions, yet none of it comes together in a satisfying way. As a sequel to the original film, it feels crass and overproduced, chucking away the humanity at the heart of the story to try and dazzle us with exotic locations and callbacks to the first one. On its own merits as a mystery, it feels loose and undisciplined, with unconvincing setbacks for our protagonist and a final reveal that stretches credulity well beyond even the most banal of potboilers. A Simple Favor was an adaptation from the novel of the same name, and it’s perhaps no coincidence that the author did not write a sequel to it nor was involved in this movie given how little cleverness there is to be found and what wit the film has feels like echoes of its far superior predecessor. It commits every cardinal sin of a bad follow-up to a great movie, including the dreaded sequel bait at the end, and only manages not to be a complete disaster due to the talent of everyone on-screen trying mightily to give this a reason to exist. Sure, they failed in that endeavor, but it was too big a favor to ask in the first place.
The Reviewers Unite 