Favors
Blake Lively photographs so well. She is frequently featured in the NY Post gossip pages, always emitting positive vibes. I must have seen hundreds of shots of her by now, but I’d never seen any of her work until last night. I watched A Simple Favor (2018), courtesy of Netflix. It is entertaining despite its faults. Lively is terrific as a confident, amoral, worldly wife, as is Anna Kendrick as a perky single mom, host of a vlog. Their elementary school age sons are classmates. One day Lively’s character asks Kendrick’s to pick up her son, as she is swamped at her advertising job. She disappears. What happened to her? I’ll say nothing more about the plot, as I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone who wishes to view it. Director Paul Feig and screenwriter Jessica Sharzer, who have extensive experience, chose a cheerful tone despite the ugliness that occurs. This is almost but not quite a black comedy. It opts for a middle ground that doesn’t quite satisfy, although it is not boring and has a solid storyline. 80,000+ users at IMDb have rated A Simple Favor, forging to a consensus of 6.9 on a scale of ten. It was adapted from a novel by Darcey Bell. It was successful at the box office, bringing in $97 million worldwide on a budget of $20 million. Add DVD sales, rentals and streaming, and Feig is guaranteed to add to an already impressive resume on both sides of the camera. It runs just shy of two hours. There is profanity and sexually suggestive situations, including a lip-lock between the stars. Kendrick’s talent has been obvious since she was the youngest ever Tony nominee for her performance in a revival of High Society. It’s great to know Lively is as gifted as she is lovely. Here they are in character:
The forecast called for a slight chance of rain so I looked forward to setting up shop on Bay Parkway, as I do each weekend. I haven’t been there for three weeks due to the weather. Having quickly hung up the wash and wolfed down lunch, eager to get going, my spirits plummeted as I stepped out of the old house and into the drizzle. Fortunately, I didn’t go to Bay Parkway to wait out what I assumed was a passing shower. It rained for at least three hours. I was lucky also when I got to my usual nook and chose not to wait for a better parking spot to become available. No one pulled out for the entire time I was there. Since I had to haul the wares about 75 yards, I left a third of them in the car. The scaffold kept everything dry, and the session ended well. One of my favorite customers, Mira, showed up with her son, who is now in school. She bought Inside Out and a Raymond Carver short story collection. My thanks, and also to the young man who purchased a children’s book in Russian and a Spanish/Russian instructional guide; and to the woman who took home two more cook books; and to the gentleman who did a swap of books in Russian. More rain tomorrow — what a surprise. Enough already.
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