Three Martini Playdate

Movies: A Simple Favor

When you think of two moms getting together so their kids can have a playdate, you probably don't imagine it takes place is a severely chic home with French ye-ye pop playing in the background and martinis so stiff they could impregnate you. But that's exactly the kind of playdate Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) finds herself on with new pal Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) in director Paul Feig's effervescent neo-noir satire A Simple Favor.

Kendrick plays to her "type" --a chipper, perfectionist single mom with a vlog where she demonstrates how to sneak veggies into food kids will eat and how to make the perfect first aid kit. The regular parents at her son's kindergarten (played by a sarcastic Greek chorus comprised of Andrew Rannells, Kelly McCormack, and Aparna Nancherla--all very underused in this movie) look at her with disdain. But then, Stephanie meets Emily--a femme fatale who blithely says "fuck" in front of her five year old son, wears men's suits tailored to perfection, and has a nude portrait of herself hanging in her kitchen (a kitchen she never cooks in--that's her husband's job).

Blake Lively as Emily Nelson makes this movie. She's reminiscent of Amy Dunne in Gone Girl only she's richer, sexier, meaner, everything-er. She's a PR director for a fashion mogul, Dennis Nylon (Rupert Friend in a great cameo role), and she's married to a sexy failed author (Henry Golding, last seen in Crazy Rich Asians). She seems to have it all. Then one day, she disappears. She calls Stephanie to ask a simple favor--can she pick up her son after school that day? Stephanie agrees...but when Emily fails to show up for multiple days after that (Emily's husband is in London) and won't pick up her phone, the noir part of the film kicks in like that third martini.



My biggest criticism of A Simple Favor is that it's all over the place--but that's also part of its charm. It's funny, zany, dark, scary, tense, ridiculous, over-the-top, and light all at once, keeping the audience totally off-kilter the entire time. Clearly, Feig is going for a send-up of Gone Girl/Mommy Murder Mystery books and films. You know--all those books with "girl" or "woman" in the title and the main character is ALWAYS an alcoholic with an unreliable memory. And he mostly succeeds. That said, the first half of the movie which focuses on the odd couple pairing of Kendrick's eager-beaver June Cleaver and Lively's nihilistic bad mommy is much better than the second half, where revelation after revelation and plot twist after plot twist happen so quickly that there's no time to react to anything before the next surprise is revealed. Apparently, the book the film is based on suffers from the same issue--everything is thrown at the wall to see what will stick. I wish Feig had been willing to cut out a plot twist or three and allow the revelations to happen more leisurely, privileging atmosphere over plot. But alas.

Despite the pacing issues, A Simple Favor is definitely fun. It also has a great soundtrack (a lot of Serge Gainsbourg), references to Diabolique, and passes the ol' Bechdel Test. So while it won't win any awards, I can recommend it without reservation. Just make sure to bring a flask filled with ice cold gin and a twist of lemon to the theatre.

Grade: B

Father's Worst Nightmare

Movies: Searching

There was/still is (?) a question on the dating site OkCupid which asks users "Do you Google your date before you go out with them?" and the answers you could choose from were "Yes. Knowledge is power!" and "No. Why spoil the mystery?"

Anyone who answers "no" is, in my opinion, a fool. Or someone who doesn't care about the possibility of BEING MURDERED on a date! Or...perhaps worse...going out with a libertarian by accident. If it happened to me (the libertarian part, not the being murdered part), it can happen to you!

Searching for people on the Internet is a modern day pastime. Give me someone with a unique first name and their profession and I can find them. Give me someone's twitter and instagram handle and I now know their political persuasion and the names of their pets. And if you think it's creepy that I search for people on The Net, again, I'm just trying to stay sexy and not get murdered.

The film Searching is the first feature-length film by Aneesh Chaganty. It's a film with a gimmick that manages not to be gimmicky. The gimmick is that the film is shot from the point-of-view of smartphones, laptops, hidden camera, and news cameras. It's similar to the 2014 horror film Unfriended but, in my opinion, much more tense. It works.

John Cho (of Harold and Kumar fame) plays David Kim. Michelle La plays his 16 year old daughter, Margot. The two are still grieving the loss of their wife and mother, Pam (Sara Sohn), who passed from cancer two years before the events of the movie. Most parents would see David and Margot as enviably close--but when Margot doesn't come home from a study group one night, David begins to delve into her social media and personal life to help a missing persons investigation led by Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) and realizes that his daughter had a secret life he knew nothing about.

Searching is absolute catnip for people who love true crime podcasts and documentaries and for anyone who has ever stalked anyone else on the internet. There are some hilarious moments, such as when David asks Margot's schoolmate "what is a tumbler" when she mentions Margot posted a lot on Tumblr. There's also an inadvertent (?) moment of humor when David sees the combination of the eggplant emoji and the water spraying emoji on one of Margot's instagram posts and the music swells to denote "DANGER SOMEONE IS SPRUNG FOR YOUR DAUGHTER!!" These moments of levity are crucial since the majority of the film is so tense I would pause with my hand hovering over my popcorn for minutes at a time.

There are twists and turns aplenty, none of which I'll go into here, but for once I didn't spoil the movie for myself and I was legitimately caught off guard multiple times when the movie suggested one course of direction and then violently swerved in another.

John Cho is excellent as the distressed father who is facing the possibility of losing his daughter on top of the loss of his wife. As the days pass without word from his daughter, he passes through naiveté, to confusion, to dread, to rage, and to hopelessness. He veers from sobbing on the floor to beating the shit out of people he thinks might have something to do with his daughter's disappearance. Cho is all grown up from his days of playing the pot-smoking, overly-conscientious Harold Lee in the Harold and Kumar films and he has the forehead grooves and under-eye bags to prove it. And this isn't a slight against his looks--the actor looks lived in, a real "dad" in the sense that he is absolutely someone you feel a  sixteen year old girl would love fiercely...but also carefully keep secrets from.

Searching was a very pleasant surprise and may actually be the most purely entertaining film I've seen this year. I try to measure movies by both how "good" or "accomplished" they are, but also by how they make me feel in the moment. And while Searching may not be as "good" as some other movies that have come out this year, it definitely made me feel excited, tense, scared, delighted, and many other emotions as a watched a man uncover clues, one by one, about the secret online life of his daughter.

Grade: A-