Producers: Paul Feig and Laura Fischer   Director: Paul Feig   Screenplay: Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis   Cast: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding, Michele Morrone, Elena Sofia Ricci, Elizabeth Perkins, Alex Newell, Taylor Ortega, Lorenzo de Moor, Aparna Nancherla, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Max Malatesta, Anita Pititto, Ian Ho, Joshua Satine, Kelly McCormack, Jake Tapper and Allison Janey   Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios/Prime Video

Grade: C-

One had better enjoy the lovely Capri locations, lovingly shot by cinematographer John Schwartzman, and the equally gorgeous costumes for the stars designed by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus, because there’s precious else that “Another Simple Favor” has going for it.  In returning to their surprisingly successful 2018 comedy mystery, director Paul Feig and screenwriter Jessica Sharzer (joined now by Laeta Kalogridis) have saddled stars Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively with a script replete with contrived situations, obnoxious characters and witless dialogue.  No wonder they, and the supporting cast, come off so badly.

As the purportedly wacky sequel opens, Kendrick’s Stephanie Summers—now not just a vlogger but a true-crime author and detective–is being pressured by her exasperated agent Vicky (Alex Newell, torturously over-the-top) to up her game, while being pressed by her son Miles (Joshua Satine) to stop babying him.  Her book signing is rudely interrupted by Emily Nelson (Lively), just sprung from prison on appeal, whom Stephanie was instrumental in putting away—while also bedding Emily’s husband Sean Townsend (Henry Golding), a professor, when Emily was thought dead.

Using a variety of snarky references to their past relationship and threats, and bolstered by Vicky’s wild encouragement, Emily induces Stephanie to be maid of honor at her marriage to wealthy Dante Versano (Michele Morrone) in Capri, where Sean, now a perpetually angry drunk, and Nicky (Ian Ho), his and Emily’s son, will also be in attendance.  Also gracing the festivities are Dante’s disapproving mother Portia (Elena Sofia Ricci) and Matteo Bartolo (Lorenzo de Moor), from the mob family at war with the Versanos.  Emily’s maniacally religious mother Margaret (Elizabeth Perkins) is also on hand, along with her sister/attendant Linda (Allison Janey).  It’s important to remember that Emily was one of triplets originally named Faith, Hope and Charity (she was Hope).

Unsurprisingly, the wedding does not go smoothly.  Two murders—one of them a quite gruesome affair—occur, and Stephanie becomes a suspect, finally being placed under virtual house arrest by the bumbling investigating detective (Max Malatesta).  An equally bumbling FBI agent (Taylor Ortega) shows up shadowing Stephanie.  Portia decides to take matters into her own hands to discover the truth.  And a number of folks on the island turn out to be harboring secrets and lies.

There are occasional glimmers of amusement amid what becomes an extraordinarily tiresome, borderline incomprehensible omnishambles of twists, reversals and mixed identities that even goes so far as to include a comic torture scene and child endangerment.  (Editor Brent White tries to hold it all together, but messiness is unavoidable, and the result is way overlong at a full two hours.)   There’s a nice slapsticky turn, for example, from Anita Pititto as the hotel maid who helps Stephanie escape her room.  But virtually everyone else in the cast is badly used.  Kendrick’s usual effervescence is drowned in snark, Lively is reduced to smarmy brittleness, and Janey gives vent to her proclivity to scream.  But Golding gets the worst of it, saddled with a thoroughly unattractive character and dialogue that makes him insufferable.

Still, there are those nice locations and glossy visuals, enhanced by Martin Whist’s production design if not by Theodore Shapiro’s aggressively bouncy score.  Maybe just turning off the sound and enjoying the images on their own would improve things.

Producers: Ben Affleck, Lynette Howell Taylor and Mark Williams   Director: Gavin O’Connor   Screenplay: Bill Dubuque   Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson, J.K. Simmons, Robert Morgan, Grant Harvey, Andrew Howard, Yael Ocasio, Lombardo Boyar, Michael Tourek and Joe Holt   Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios

Grade: C-

It’s astonishing that it took director Gavin O’Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque nearly a decade to come up with a sequel to their 2016 action movie as bad as “The Accountant 2.”  It was a terrible waste of their time, and watching the result is now a terrible waste of ours.

The movie is designed to be a puzzle composed of two principal parts.  On the one hand it’s a buddy comedy in which Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), the autistic combination of brainiac and fighting machine introduced in the first movie, finally reconciles with his hit-man brother Brax (Jon Bernthal).  On the other it’s a violent action flick in which they, sometimes in tandem with US Treasury agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), work to bring down a ruthless human-trafficking organization that runs a prostitution ring and a money-laundering business on the side.  It’s headed, as is indicated early on, by Burke (Robert Morgan), who uses a fish-marketing business as a cover and employs master sniper Cobb (Grant Harvey) as his enforcer.  He’s particularly obsessed with Anaïs (Daniella Pineda), an icy blonde whom he fears will come after him after she recovers the memory she lost in a car crash that, as her doctor (Joe Holt) will eventually reveal, also led to her becoming, via acquired savant syndrome, as expert at assassination as at chess.

The movie actually kicks off with a meeting at a club between Anaïs and Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), the Treasury honcho Wolff met in the first film but who’s now retired and a P.I.  He’s been hired, he explains, by a father searching for his son, who disappeared as a young boy trying to cross the southern border with his parents.  She’s unresponsive to his questions, but it doesn’t matter, because the whole thing is apparently a set-up.  Cobb is across the street with his rifle at the ready, and Burke’s army invades the place, killing King (Simmons goes through a robust fight scene before getting lucky and leaving the movie early) but letting Anaïs escape, much to Burke’s annoyance.

Medina, King’s protégé, follows his posthumous advice to contact Christian, who lives a reclusive life in an RV in Boise, where he’s aided by Justine (Allison Robertson), the nonverbal savant (via an electronic voice provided by Alison Wright) in his effort to live a less socially awkward life; as we’re reintroduced to him, she’s helping him dress for a speed-dating session, which serves (as will a later sequence at a honkytonk) to suggest how irresistible he is to women, the handsome devil, until they’re confronted by the Mr. Spock objectivity with which he views the world.  Medina’s reluctant to deal with Christian, but realizes his intellectual ability can help decipher the clues left behind by King.

He, in turn, decides to contact his estranged brother, a reckless, motor-mouthed murderer, for help. Bernthal’s Brax we’re meant to take as a lovable lout who, presumably, only whacks those who deserve it (though you might feel that “lovable” is going way too far); he’s introduced here via a long, desperately unfunny scene in which he practices arguing, apparently with a former girlfriend, about custody of, presumably, a dog (in the actual call he defers to her at once).  But when Christian calls, just as he’s finishing a job, he immediately leaves the corpses (and a terrified witness) behind because, while still angry that his brother has ignored him for years, he still yearns for some emotional companionship.

So Christian, Brax and Medina join up to solve King’s case, though she eventually abandons them in horror at their methods (Christian’s roughing up the owner of a pizza outfit serving to launder Burke’s money had distressed her earlier. The unfortunate echoes of Pizzagate are hopefully unintentional.)   In any event, their further sleuthing will eventually lead them, through a circuitous route that frankly defies understanding, to a prison camp in Juarez, just as the children housed in brutal conditions there—apparently the kids of the women Burke has forced into prostitution, including a boy named Alberto (Yael Ocasio) related to Anaïs—are about to buried alive by Cobb.  Naturally they foil him by killing off the army of guards defending the place, and Cobb too.  And Brax shows how his humanity has grown by adopting the camp cat as a pet!

This précis should be taken as an approximation, since frankly many of the details of the criminal-enterprise part of the plot—the whys and wherefores of its operation—remain unclear (at one point, for example Cobb kills an old fellow eating in his drab Fort Worth kitchen, whose significance isn’t terribly clear).  There is one sequence in the muddled business, however, that stands out for its cleverness, in which the team of expert young autistic hackers overseen by Justine at the Harbor Neuroscience Academy use the computers they huddle over to extract a photo from the laptop of an oblivious woman, using distraction after distraction to keep her from the screen as they cooperate in fulfilling the mission.  You might deplore what’s happening, thinking that such invasion of privacy could be directed against you, even as you applaud the kids’ triumph.

Otherwise, though, the portion of the picture dealing with the uncovering of Burke’s nefarious enterprises is not just needlessly convoluted but quite unpleasant, and the action sequences scattered throughout it—from the melee involving King at the start, through the boys’ manhandling of foes at regular intervals and the big firefight at Burke’s prison camp at the close—are clumsily choreographed, sloppily shot by cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and spastically edited by Richard Pearson.  In fact for the most part the film, with a production design by Jade Healy and costumes by Isis Mussenden, looks drab, apart from the few scenes at the Harbor Academy, and Bryce Dessner’s score is totally unexceptional.

Presumably it’s the human component, particularly the interplay between Christian and Brax, that’s supposed to redeem the action schlock, but here too “The Accountant” misses the mark.  Affleck’s natural stiffness fits his role, and he captures Christian’s combination of physical gawkiness and logical precision nicely (the speed-dating scene and a dance at that honkytonk are pleasant examples); he also carries off the character’s explosions of violence.  And there are a few instances, like a conversation atop his RV, where Christian’s interaction with Brax shows some real depth.  Overall, though, Brax remains, despite his gradual softening, an abrasive fellow, and too often Bernthal’s portrayal of him is simply grating.  Perhaps the future installments that are probably inevitable will allow him to add some further shading to the character.  Among the supporting cast Addai-Robinson is stuck in a thankless role, but Pineda is striking even though Anaïs remains pretty much a visual effect; Simmons is his usual reliable self in what amounts to a cameo. 

“The Accountant 2” winds up as a movie whose individual ingredients aren’t terribly palatable, and they never cohere into a satisfying whole.