I innocently turn on Netflix to see what's new, and suddenly a young woman is dancing maniacally, tossing her hair in all directions like she wants to get whiplash, as she tosses stuff into a suitcase. I've never seen any dance like that except in Haitian drum ceremonies where you are possessed by an orisha, and on tv commercials, where the lady has found eternal happiness by changing her brand of dishwashing liquid. She continues to dance maniacally as she unloads the moving van, dances up the stairs and into the bedroom. Then she stops and stares at the 170 pairs of shoes in the wardrobe. She looks horrified. Did she accidentally move into the wrong house, or is someone els living in her house? But I've got to see what's going on.
The movie is A Simple Favor, about a simple favor the spins out of control.
Scene 1: Stephanie, in one of those absurdly elegant kitchens that passes for "lower middle class" in movies, is starting a vlog on how to make zucchini chocolate chip cookies. Ugh. She stops to tell viewers how worried she is that her best friend Emily is missing. Emily asked Stephanie to pick up her son from school, but never came home. Any chance that the son is a high school football jock played by a 30-year old fitness model?
Scene 2: Flashback to what happened: International Cuisine Day in Stephanie's son's first grade class. Darn it! There are 12 kids playing instead of eating the cuisine, while Stephanie volunteers for everything, and two moms and a gay dad played by Andrew Rannells make snarky comments about the absent Emily.The sons of Stephanie and Emily have become friends, and want a play date. "We'll have to wait and ask your mother"
A car approaches, and absurdly elegant high-heeled shoes get out and walk toward the drop-off. It's Emily, wearing a man's business suit, channelling a stuck-up version of Diane Keaton in Annie Hall.
The boys make their request, but she says no, she already has a play date with "a symphony of anti-depressants." Hey getting high instead of minding your kid is child abuse! Besides, "I let you tear my labia as you exited my womb, so we're even." I don't know what a labia is, and I'm pretty sure that I don't want to know.
But she gives in, and asks Stephanie to come along as a play-date chaperone. There's a chocolate martini in it for her.
Scene 3: Emily's absurdly elegant house. There's a painting in the living room: a close-up of her vagina. The camera zooms in on her vagina for five minutes and shows it intermittently for the rest of the scene. I can see why lesbians like this movie so much. If it was a painting of a giant penis, I'd be dancing maniacally. Emily tells us that she modeled for painters in college, but this "perv" got obsessed with her, so she dumped him and took the painting. It's not worth anything, though.
Emily hates her house -- a "f*king money pit," the town -- "a f*king shit-hole", and her husband, who wrote a bestseller ten years ago and nothing since. He's completely impotent, on the page and in the bedroom.
Well, Stephanie can top that. Her husband died in a car accident, with her brother in the car, so...too much information for the first date, girl! You'll scare her away!
Her husband had life insurance, but she's still struggling, and it will run out in 2020. Wait, I thought this was a new movie -- nope, Netflix lied, like in those old rerun ads: "if you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" It's from 2017.
They discuss each other's rings, tattoos, and general sexiness. OMG, next they'll be evaluating vaginal sprays. I need to see a penis, pronto!
It's the Hubby, Sean, played by Henry Golding. They kiss passionately, insult each other, kiss passionately, insult each other, and so on. He definitely is not a dud in the sack. He and Emily just get aroused by complaining.
Scene 4: The mothers and kids at the park. Emily is wearing a man's suit again, promoting the butch lesbian stereotype. But Stephanie is ultra-girly. She pretends to be a vampire or something to chase her kid around, but she's too soft and fragile. Her dead husband, a macho man, "was much better at the roughousing stuff." Ugh, gender polarization! And I'm getting tired of this. Fast forwarding again.
