SPOILER WARNING: The next article incorporates main spoilers for One other Easy Favor. When you’ve got not but seen the movie, proceed at your individual threat! For a spoiler-free take, try my two-star CinemaBlend evaluation.
I really like a great crimson herring. On the subject of nice thriller fiction, I’m very a lot the form of viewers member who actively takes in all the introduced clues and tries to infer what’s going on proper alongside the protagonist. I adore it when a narrative can throw me for a loop with a distracting element. In recent times, certainly one of my favourite examples of that is in director Paul Feig’s A Easy Favor.
There are various cool narrative turns within the 2018 thriller, however there may be one explicit seed that by no means truly blossoms: when Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) first confronts Emily (Blake Full of life) about having a twin, the latter off-handedly mentions that she isn’t truly a twin however as an alternative a triplet – certainly one of her sisters having died in childbirth. It’s the form of particular exposition that you simply assume is launched as a basis for a shock growth within the third act, however that by no means truly occurs, and I really like that it by no means occurs. It’s a cliché that the film nimbly avoids.
Seven years later, we now have One other Easy Favor, and all of that excellence is flushed down the bathroom. It’s typically mentioned that sequels and remakes can’t wreck their predecessors as a result of the predecessors live on, however this can be a uncommon case the place that’s not true; the brand new film makes it look like the unique purposefully hid a secret as a way of organising a reveal within the observe up, and it’s an enormous bummer.
The difficulty rests in simply how apparent the plot growth is within the sequel. In what I keep is completely logical habits, I made the choice to rewatch A Easy Favor proper earlier than seeing One other Easy Favor, and the massive consequence of that call was that I noticed the massive twist coming from a mile away and needed to wait what felt like an eternity for the characters to determine what I already did.
The sequel thinks it’s being sly when Emily’s mom, Margaret (Elizabeth Perkins), says in the course of the pre-wedding reception, “I do know what you probably did. I noticed the ashes. Who burns a child, proper?” It’s supposed to return throughout as a non-sequitur from a gin-soaked, resentful mom, however the actuality is that the film would possibly as nicely put the phrases “CHARITY IS ALIVE” on display screen.
There are different causes that I used to be upset with One other Easy Favor (for instance, the ridiculously compelled friendship between Stephanie and Emily), however this resolution is especially irksome. Ineffective thriller building is one factor, nevertheless it provides insult to harm that the 2025 film picks up a thread from the primary film that was higher left un-pulled. Not solely is it lazy writing to go for that low-hanging fruit, nevertheless it’s additionally notably a much less efficient echo of certainly one of its predecessor’s massive twists, which is without doubt one of the worst pitfalls into which a sequel can fall.
I went into One other Easy Favor with excessive hopes and expectations, however they dissolved like gossamer as quickly as I discovered it was going with the key triplet route. Contemplating that it occurred about half-hour into the two-hour film, to say that I used to be upset with the sequel could be a major understatement.