“This movie is bonkers,” Blake Lively tells the audience at the Ham Yard Hotel before the screening of Another Simple Favor. It’s a fitting precursor to this film, the sequel to the equally madcap A Simple Favor, released to decent box office in 2018 before discovering cult status on Prime Video mid-pandemic. Given its success ($97.6m on a $20m budget), it makes sense that Prime would have funded a second outing, especially with the quirky enmeshing of its talented director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Spy) and the winning chemistry of leads Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively firmly intact. Where the first film saw Kendrick’s mommy-vlogger Stephanie form a chaotic friendship with fellow mum Emily (a martini-sipping enigma, part wild gal pal, part femme fatale). This muddled bond leads down a tumultuous road of murder and espionage, and the sequel follows a similar course.

Another Simple Favor (kudos on the title) picks up more or less where we left off. Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) has built a career off the back of the first films’ events, but her pithy book adaptation of the story is seeing meandering sales. When Emily waltzes in at a book launch with a characteristically unhinged ultimatum: that Stephanie be her maid of honour or face a crippling lawsuit, we’re promptly whisked off to Capri for the wedding of the decade. In true glossy noir style, the tension prickles beneath the sun-drenched glamour as we’re constantly wondering whether Emily is well-intentioned or if more drama is afoot. Put simply, murder never feels too far away in these movies.

This time around, it’s a post-White Lotus world and the film borrows extensively from that franchise. From the Italian setting to the campy absurdness and the murderous subplot, there are continuous echoes of that HBO juggernaut, and you half-expect Jennifer Coolidge to come stumbling out of the bracken. Even some of the promotional artwork feels knowingly referential, and it’s something the movie leans into, perhaps anticipating its audience overlap. The Capri backdrop is as impressive as the increasingly ridiculous outfits Lively dons, with Feig layering on the drone shots so we can take in the luxurious setting in all its outlandish abundance.

The movie commendably gets us to Italy fairly quickly – like all good sequels, it assumes we know what’s going on and doesn’t waste valuable time setting everything up. Its aim is to go bigger, and (also mirroring The White Lotus) it’s a touch more ensemble-driven this time. Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells et al return, but the cast has expanded to include Elena Sofia Ricci as a viperous mother-in-law, Elizabeth Perkins as Emily’s pill-popping mother, and Allison Janney who’s having tremendous fun as the deranged Aunt Linda, who may or may not be harbouring murderous ambitions of her own.

The plot is as demented as Lively promised. Feig zigs and zags through twists with gleeful abandon, leaping and bounding through genres, noir one minute, comedy the next. This genre-hopping adds energy but sometimes this hurdling feels disjointed. It’s part of the Simple world’s style, and if you can accept the soap opera storylines, it works, but the film requires so much suspension of disbelief at some of the more bizarre plotlines that it leaves a weird taste. To (sort of) spoil a scene, a major character is murdered the night before the wedding, and after some perfunctory handwringing, everyone decides the wedding should go ahead anyway – a choice that’s both baffling and tonally off. There’s an FBI agent who’s comically ditsy, played for laughs, but it’s implausible that anyone so incompetent would reach the ranks of agent. The film asks you to overlook so much to buy into its wacky story but consequently, for all its likeability, it winds up often feeling like an episode of Dynasty, and the stakes are particularly low when we know that, cartoon-style, neither Stephanie nor Emily’s lives are ever in any real risk. Despite the litany of demises, no addition to the Simple franchise will ever actually kill off either of them, so the stakes ultimately collapse.

The strength of the first film was always the dynamic between the two leads, and it’s great to see them back together. Kendrick has a feisty cutesiness that lends itself well to this role, which demands a relatability despite the zany goings-on, and Lively has a watchable star quality mixed with strong comedic timing, devouring every scene she’s in with delicious derision. Like Stephanie, we’re never sure what she has planned next, and we’re kept on our toes throughout – this core friendship is a huge part of why the movie works, and the juxtaposition of these two characters feels both gripping and believable.

For all its daftness, Another Simple Favor works. While not as shrewd or compelling as the first, transporting the chaos to the coast of Capri is a smart move, and if you strap yourself in and appreciate what it’s trying to do, let the plot wash over you, you’re in for a wild ride. In Kendrick, Lively and Feig’s hands, it’s certain to be exactly that.

Another Simple Favor comes to Prime Video from 1st May