“Another Simple Favor”, which was released on Amazon Prime several months ago, mildly dissatisfied me. While it is still fun to watch its two engaging lead actresses pushing and pulling each other from the beginning to the end, the movie is hampered by blatant plot contrivance and thin characterization, and the result is less charming than its predecessor.

The movie, which is a sequel to “A Simple Favor” (2018), begins with how things have been rather uneventful for Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) during last five years since what happened in the previous film. Thanks to her little investigation adventure involved with her former friend Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), she became quite famous in public, and she even published a book about that, but she does not know what to do next except paying too much attention to her son as your average suburban single mother.

However, there soon comes a big surprise when she attends a little local book signing event. Emily, who has been in prison thanks to Stephanie’s investigation, suddenly appears right in front of Stephanie, and, of course, she wants Stephanie to do a supposedly harmless favor for her. Naturally, Stephanie does not want to get involved with Emily again, but then she changes her mind because, well, she cannot help but become curious about whatever Emily may be planning behind her back.

It turns out that Emily somehow got released thanks to some powerful (and shady) figure in Italy, who was once her boyfriend a long time ago and is now willing to marry her as soon as possible. Thanks to this dude, Emily and Stephanie quickly go to Italy along with several other wedding guests via his big private airplane, and Stephanie is going to be the bridesmaid for her at the upcoming wedding held in Capri. 

Needless to say, Stephanie remains suspicious of Emily, and, not so surprisingly, there soon come a series of unexpected happenings before Emily’s wedding day. To Stephanie’s little surprise, Emily also invites her ex-husband just because she wants to see their son currently under his custody, and Stephanie feels quite awkward to be with him because of their rather embarrassing past.

In addition, the groom’s mother is not so pleased about his wedding to say the least, and she is determined to hurt her future daughter-in-law’s feelings by any means necessary. She deliberately invites the two certain family members of Emily, and Emily is surely not amused at all because they are the last people she wants to see right now.

Nevertheless, Emily and her future husband still want to marry, and Emily remains quite nice to Stephanie, who finds herself beckoned more by Emily’s seemingly good-willed gestures. At one point, they have a pretty good time alone by themselves outside a big hotel where they are staying with others, and Stephanie comes to wonder more whether Emily is really sincere to her.

As already shown to us at the beginning of the film, the situation subsequently becomes quite serious for both of them. After getting framed for a couple of crimes she definitely did not commit, Stephanie discovers that there is actually another secret behind Emily (Is this a spoiler?), and that naturally leads to another risky adventure for her.

As following Stephanie’s increasingly bumpy adventure, director/co-producer Paul Feig, who previously directed “A Simple Favor”, and his crew members including cinematographer John Schwartzman fill the screen with a lot of mood and style. While the movie feels as bright and sunny as you can expect from its main background, costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus has a lot of fun with Emily’s several striking clothes including her gorgeous wedding dress, which will surely leave a big impression on you along with the excerpt from Ennio Morricone’s famous score for “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968).

However, the story stumbles more than once as getting pretty predictable with artificial plot turns. I will not go into detail here, but what is revealed around its last act is a little too preposterous, and the movie also fails to bring more depth or interest to Stephanie and Emily’s complicated relationship before eventually giving a resolution which feels too convenient in my inconsequential opinion.

Anyway, the movie works to some degree mainly thanks to the good comic chemistry between Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. While Kendrick holds the ground with her plucky presence, Lively has some juicy fun with her role later in the story, and they effortlessly click well with each other during several key scenes in the film. In contrast, several notable performers in the film including Andrew Rannells, Henry Golding, Elizabeth Perkins, and Allison Janney are under-utilized to my disappointment, and that is another main flaw of the film.

Overall, “Another Simple Favor” does not work well enough because of its many glaring weak aspects, but it is not entirely without fun at least mainly thanks to its two good lead actresses who certainly deserve better than this. I do not know whether there will be another sequel as implied by the very last scene of the film, but I can only hope that I will be more entertained if that really happens.