As Adam Sandler never made another installment of Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, or the Zohan, Murder Mystery is currently his funniest series. Another outrageous mystery, Murder Mystery 2, is currently playing in theaters and will be available on Netflix on Friday.
Nick (Sandler) and Audrey Spitz (Jennifer Aniston) attempted to launch a private detective company after solving a murder in Italy. They accept Maharajah Vic’s (Adeel Akhtar) wedding offer for a weekend retreat on his private island because things aren’t going well.
Vic is abducted after a murder occurs at his wedding to Claudette (Melanie Laurent), as the title of the film predicts. In the midst of death and destruction, Nick and Audrey are once more on the case and cracking lowbrow but undoubtedly humorous jokes.
Murder Mystery is kind of the opposite of Glass Onion in terms of Netflix mystery series. The film’s main advantage is that it isn’t sophisticated. High stakes murder is met by Nick and Audrey with hilarity and crude jokes.
The majority of the jokes are successful because they plainly make fun of people’s private parts. If any of those jokes go too far, the others come so quickly that the next one will undoubtedly be appropriate.
Nick and Audrey deconstruct the tropes of mysteries not because they are genius crime solvers, but because they have common sense. When outrageous things happen to them, they’re shocked and indignant, because it’s not their forte.
The mystery itself moves briskly, introducing suspects and motives and escalating the conspiracy. At first glance, the clues and revelations appear to check out, so James Vanderbilt’s script still hangs those puerile jokes on a real, logical mystery.
Some characters from the first Murder Mystery return, like Vic, Colonel Ulenga (John Kani) and inspector Delacroix (Dany Boon).
New characters make prime suspects including Claudette, Vic’s ex, the Countess Sekou (Jodie Turner Smith), board member Francisco (Enrique Arce) and Vic’s sister Saira (Kuhoo Verma).
International detective Miller (Mark Strong) arrives to help recover Vic. Strong has the presence to play a real action hero. He’s great in comedies but a straight action movie should give him a vehicle too.
Sandler has made a cottage industry of filming ensemble comedies in exotic locations.
