Murder Mystery | Through the Shattered Lens

Four years ago, Nick and Audrey Spitz (Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston) solved a convoluted murder mystery and became minor celebrities. Nick quit his job with the NYPD. Audrey quit her job as a hairdresser. They opened up their own private detective agency.

Unfortunately, as a narrator explains to us at the start of Murder Mystery 2, things haven’t gone smoothly for Nick and Audrey. They’ve struggled to establish themselves as detectives. In fact, Nick doesn’t even have a P.I. license because he has yet to pass the exam and he balks at having to actually study criminology. While Audrey tries to convince him to, at the very least, read a book on kidnapping, Nick is more concerned with coming up with cute business cards. His big idea to combine the traditional business card with floss and a razor. Personally, I wouldn’t want to use a business card to take care of my teeth but maybe that’s just me.

When Nick and Audrey are invited to an exclusive wedding, it’s a chance for them to reacquaint themselves with Vikram (Adeel Akhatar) and Colonel Ulenga (John Kani), both of whom were featured in the first Murder Mystery. When Vikram is kidnapped and one of his bodyguards is murdered, it’s a chance to Nick and Audrey to once again prove that they’re capable of solving a crime. When former MI6 agent-turned-security consultant Captain Miller (Mark Strong) literally emerges from the sea and takes over the investigation, it’s a chance to Audrey to meet one of her heroes and for Nick to get a little jealous. And when the action moves to France, it’s an excuse for the film’s cast and crew to hang out in Paris for a few weeks.

I enjoyed the first Murder Mystery, which was a surprisingly sweet and funny comedy that showcased Sandler and Aniston’s chemistry while also make good use of Sandler in one of his more likable comedic roles. Like all Sandler characters, Nick may be something of a manchild but he’s not deliberately destructive. He means well. The first film’s mystery was enjoyably convoluted and a lot of the humor came from just how out of place Sandler and Aniston were in an Agatha Christie-style whodunit.

Murder Mystery 2, unfortunately, it not quite as much fun as the first film. A huge part of the problem is that Nick and Audrey are no longer amateur detectives who are both shocked and secretly thrilled to be solving an actual murder. Now, they’re professional (if somewhat incompetent) detectives. The first film had a sweet subtext about Sandler trying to prove that he was as good a detective as thought he was. He had something to prove, to both his wife and to himself. In the second film, the emphasis is more on action than humor. Suddenly, Sandler and Aniston are engaging in high-speed car chases and battles atop the Eiffel Tower. It all feels a bit mechanical and, much as with his direction of The Binge, director Jeremy Garelick often seems to just be going through the motions.

On the plus side, Sandler and Aniston still have their chemistry and both of them still know how to make an otherwise corny joke work. Jennifer Aniston gets to wear a lot of really pretty outfits and Adam Sandler gets a memorable scene where he tries to convince himself that he can jump over a moat. There’s a genuinely funny moment towards the end of the film, when a character unrelated to the mystery randomly shows up and interrupts a tense showdown. Even though I wish the film had done a bit more with character, Mark Strong also seems to be having parodying his own image. There are moments of Murder Mystery 2 that are actually pretty amusing, though I think chuckled more than I actually laughed out loud. Ultimately, though, Murder Mystery 2 is rather forgettable.

There are actually two Adam Sandlers.

First, there’s the Adam Sandler that everyone knows. This Adam Sandler is the comedian who has won multiple Razzie awards and who has produced and starred in some of the most critically derided comedies of all time. This is the Adam Sandler who often seems to make movies specifically so he can either take a vacation or give some work to the less successful members of his entourage. This is the Adam Sandler whose movies were cited as a tool of patriarchal oppression in the “cool girl” speech during Gone Girl.

And then there’s another Adam Sandler. This Adam Sandler is a sad-eyed character actor who is probably one of modern cinema’s best portrayers of existential malaise. This is the Adam Sandler who starred in movies like Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Funny People, Spanglish, The Cobbler, Men, Women, and Children, and The Meyerowitz Stories. Some of those films were very good and some of them, admittedly, were very bad but what they all had in common was that they featured Adam Sandler giving a surprisingly good dramatic performance. In fact, if someone only saw Adam Sandler’s dramatic work (and not his work in films like Jack and Jill or Grown-Ups, to cite just two examples), they would be justified in assuming that Sandler was one of the most acclaimed actors around. (One reason why we get so much more annoyed with Sandler’s bad comedies — as opposed to all the other equally bad comedies out there — is because we actually have evidence that Sandler’s capable of doing so much better.)

Unfortunately, almost all of Sandler’s dramatic films were box office disappointments. Punch-Drunk Love is now widely viewed as being a classic but, when it was first released, it failed to even recoup its production budget at the box office. Audiences consistently indicated they preferred silly Adam Sandler to dramatic Adam Sandler and so, Sandler continued to make silly theatrical films until even those started to bring in less money than they had before.

As of now, Sandler does most of his work for Netflix and the results have been mixed. His performance in The Meyerowitz Stories was rightfully acclaimed while his comedies have been considerably less celebrated. And then you have the just-released Murder Mystery, which seems to straddle the line between the two Sandlers.

On the one hand, Murder Mystery is just as silly and implausible as a typical Adam Sandler comedy. Sandler plays a New York police officer named Nick Spitz. Nick has failed his detective’s exam three times but that still hasn’t stopped him from telling his wife, Audrey (Jennifer Aniston), that he’s been promoted. Nick’s living a lie and he deals with his guilt by taking Audrey on a long-promised trip to Europe. On the flight over, Audrey meets the charming and wealthy Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans) who invites Audrey and Nick to a party on his family’s yacht. The yacht is owned by billionaire Malcolm Quince (Terrence Stamp) and, when Malcolm’s murdered during the party, it’s up to fake Detective Nick to figure out who is responsible!

Was it the glamorous actress, Grace (Gemma Arterton)? Or the handsome race car driver, Juan Carlos (Luis Gerardo Mendez)? Or how about the genocidal warlord, Colonel Ulenga (John Kani)? Of course, the local Interpol detective (Dany Boon) thinks that it was Nick and Audrey and he even threatens to reveal that Nick’s been lying about his job! Can Nick and Audrey solve the murder and rekindle the romance of their stalled marriage?

As I said, it’s all pretty silly. Most of the film’s humor comes from just how out-of-place Nck and Audrey are in the world of high society. Audrey is excited because the murder mystery is just like the plot of one of the paperback novels that she likes to read. Nick spends most of the movie trying to keep his wife from discovering the truth about his job. While everyone else is scheming and plotting and trying to kill one another, Nick and Audrey are literally searching Wikipedia for information on all the suspects. It’s dumb and occasionally amusing and it’s also rather innocent. If your grandmother ever wants to watch a comedy with you, Murder Mystery would probably be the one to go with. There’s nothing to offend grandma but, at the same time, the shots of Monaco and Italy are nice to look at and the film is occasionally amusing enough to hold your attention.

Interestingly, even though the film’s a silly comedy, Sandler gives one of his more grounded performances. There’s no silly voices or sudden yelling or any of the typical Sandler shtick. Instead, he’s rather subdued and it works for the film. He and Jennifer Aniston (another performer who often seems to settle for material that’s beneath what she’s capable of) make for a likable and believable couple and they both play off each other well.

Murder Mystery is a likable, lightweight comedy. It’s not necessarily something that you’re going to remember much about after you watch it, of course. It’s not that type of film. Instead, it’s a perfect Netflix film. It’s entertaining but you can do other stuff while you’re watching it without having to worry about accidentally missing a brilliant moment of cinematic history.

As for Adam Sandler, he’s following this up with Uncut Gems, a crime drama from the Safdie Brothers. The Safdie Brothers worked wonders with Robert Pattinson in 2017’s Good Time. So, who knows? This time next year, Adam Sandler could be the new Superman….