AUSTIN, Texas—When Nicole Kidman proclaimed in 2021 that we go to movie theaters “to laugh, to cry, to care,” I rolled my eyes. A movie theater is just a giant TV; it’s not a sanctuary to wring our souls dry of all that worries and ails us. Kidman, in the much-parodied AMC commercial, went on to describe “that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim” (barf), how “we go somewhere we’ve never been before” (dumb), and are “not just entertained, but somehow reborn” (what?).
Yet, over the last few years—despite my initial cringing—I’ve come to realize, time and time again, that Kidman was right. My sad, cynical soul was just being annoying. Me3GAN, The Idea of You, Dune 2, Poor Things, Nope, and even Madame Web—all movies I saw in packed theaters, where I laughed and cheered and made friends with the strangers next to me. Watching a movie in a theater with an enthused crowd is seven million times better than streaming something on your laptop on a hungover Sunday or random Wednesday night.
The Paul Feig-directed sequel picks up about five years after the first one left off; Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie Smothers is a best-selling crime author whose cult mom following has shifted from YouTube to…streaming? Lively’s Emily is fresh out of the slammer thanks to her mysterious Italian fiancé; and Henry Golding Sean’s Towsend—who ended the first film in an affair with Stephanie—is angry, drunk, and alone. (And every time he appeared on screen, I felt a whisper in the back of my brain saying, “I could fix him.”)
When Emily shows up at Stephanie’s (cringe-inducing) book reading to ask her to be her maid of honor at her Italian wedding, Stephanie’s hesitant; she’s pretty sure it’s a trap so Emily can murder her. Luckily, she has her trusty book agent, Vicky (Alex Newell) to accompany her across the Atlantic as “insurance.” And so we’re off to Capri, Italy, where the flowers multiply by the second; Emily’s hats get bigger and bigger in each scene; and the dizzying number of twists and turns could be a marketing opportunity for the film to sell some branded barf bags.
If you’ve read other reviews, you might think I’m crazy, but I enjoyed Another Simple Favor more than the first one. The movie is so sure of itself that it’s unhinged and ridiculous in a way we rarely get to see in films with two female leads. Throw in Allison Janney, Andrew Rannells (who told his eight-year-old daughter: “If you can’t be smart be funny, and if you can’t be funny, be pretty”), Elena Sofia Ricci, Elizabeth Perkins, and Jake Tapper (yes, the CNN anchor, as himself) and call it a kiki. Stephanie and Emily’s rapport is, ahem, pitch perfect, and I would support a trilogy based solely on their snarky and snippy interactions. But my main takeaway as I exited the theater was, why is this gorgeous film not getting a theatrical release?
Something similar happened at last year’s SXSW. I watched the premiere of The Idea of You in a packed Paramount Theater, with an audience that cheered, clapped, and “awww’ed” throughout. The roar of applause at the end of the film was only matched by the roar of applause I heard at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. I gushed over the film with my row-mates and made friends with people on Twitter who were also enthusiastically posting about how much they loved it. (To this day, Jez staff writer Kylie Cheung, who was also at the premiere, has The Idea of You in her Letterboxd Top Four. I told everyone that I love and respect that it was perfect.)
But when it was released on streaming a couple of weeks later (again, on Prime Video), pretty much everyone reported back to me that “it was fine.” Here’s a sample of text responses I got: “It’s SO bad!” “Major cringe” “Literally LOLing and hiding our faces” “You said it was a top 10 rom com of all time. I cannot.” I’m still not convinced Prime released the same film on streaming that they showed us at the Paramount Theater.
Granted, the reviews for The Idea of You were all fantastic, and the reviews for Another Simple Favor have been mid, at best. But at least to this blogger, Another Simple Favor was an absurd, fucked-up-but-fun Vespa ride through crazy town. I can also admit that approximately one-fourth of my enjoyment probably came from watching Kendrick and Lively spar, evade death, and motor around Capri on a screen big enough to swallow my brain and keep me from scrolling through Twitter or noticing that I need to water my plants.
Nicole Kidman nailed it when she said, “We come to this place for magic”: Another Simple Favor reaffirmed for me the power of movie theaters. And even though Amazon Prime has deprived you of the joy of gasping at this film next to strangers, I still think you should watch it—even if that’s from your couch.
