Written by Ben Murchison
Murder Mystery is the fifth Adam Sandler offering from Netflix, and while it is easily the most enjoyable of the bunch, that isn’t a ringing endorsement. The movie relies on a few good running jokes and middling marital banter to sustain it. It features some impressive set pieces, but suffers from an irrational plot and conflicting tone that largely wastes the talents of its stars, and screen time of its ensemble cast.
The movie follows Nick (Sandler) and Audrey (Jennifer Aniston) Spitz, an NYPD cop and hairdresser respectively, who intend to take a long overdue honeymoon to Europe. However, they find themselves on the run from Inspector de la Croix (Dany Boon) and someone looking to frame them for an inheritance murder plot. Sandler and Aniston play well off of one another as a sarcastic husband, and a wife that is tired of his jokes, and their relationship is interesting but eventually loses in the chaos of absurd characters and illogical events.
The murder caper brings together as an estranged group of friends and family members come together for a yacht cruise to celebrate the pending nuptials of billionaire Malcolm Quince (Terence Stamp) and Suzi Nakamura (Shioli Kutsuna). Suzi was previously in a relationship with Quince’s nephew Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans), who invites the Spitz’s after a chance meeting on an airplane to help crash the party. Also present are Malcolm’s son Tobey (David Walliams) actress Grace Ballard (Gemma Arterton), race car driver Juan Carlos Rivera (Luis Gerardo Mendez), a Maharajah (Adeel Akhtar), and a one-handed, one-eyed Colonel (John Kani) and his bodyguard Sergei (Olafur Darri Olafsson).
When Malcolm winds up dead just after announcing that everyone is being cut off and Suzi will be named as his sole benefactor, everyone is a suspect. Murder mystery novel enthusiast Audrey is more enamored by their situation than her observant but out of shape detective wannabe husband with the aim of a storm trooper.
As you watch the latest from Director Kyle Newacheck who is best known as the creator of the successful Comedy Central show Workaholics, you may be unclear if you should be taking the plot seriously or if you are supposed to accept things as an over the top mockery which Sandler films sometimes strive for. The cast itself blends people being played as straight, with oddly eccentric ones, which further contributes to the confusion. This may be due to the combination that is created by writer James Vanderbilt, whose own career has no particular genre or theme. The movies conclusion actually harkens back to one of his first films, Basic, which attempted to build up plot twists and mystery before unravelling into a convoluted mess with no real payoff. Much in the same way that the cast has proven talents, Vanderbilt does as well with Zodiac and Truth as credits to his name, but Murder Mystery just doesn’t offer anything that hasn’t been done better already.
Outside of the Sandler and Aniston dynamic, Nick’s obsession with food, his affinity for being cheap, and a few witty lines by them both, most of the laughs come from Akhtar’s unique mannerisms and way of speaking as the Maharajah, and from a running joke with Mendez as a race car driver that doesn’t speak English so his response to everything is a generic comment on his profession. For the most part though, nothing is amusing enough to generate more than a sympathetic laugh, and before you can start thinking through the mystery aspect of the movie, the suspects start turning up dead.
Clearly Netflix is satisfied with their return on investment from their prior Sandler vehicles, and this one is no low-budget affair, but you have to wade through the formulaic elements of this to get to any enjoyment. Ultimately if this was reimagined as a sort of dark comedy that allowed you to dissect the murder plot and maintain the better dry humored dialogue, it would fare better, but in this incarnation it’s just passable.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 10
