Streaming TV offers so many options. When you lack the energy to sort through all the content, it can be relaxing just to check out the current No. 1 movie on Netflix. If millions of other people are streaming it, it can’t be that bad, right? Right?
Full disclosure: I suspected I wasn’t going to find any brilliant sleuthing in Murder Mystery 2, the sequel to a movie with a title that screams “search engine optimization.” Directed by Jeremy Garelick and scripted by James Vanderbilt — who somehow also wrote David Fincher’s Zodiac — the film actually isn’t much of a murder mystery. It’s a broad comedy with action thriller elements that pairs Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston as married detectives.
The deal
Or wannabe detectives, anyway. Although Nick Spitz (Sandler) almost made detective with the NYPD, the couple gained most of their dubious mystery-solving cred during the shenanigans of the first film. A hairstylist by trade, Audrey Spitz (Aniston) pores over a crime-solving manual authored by sleek international operative Connor Miller (Mark Strong), dreaming of doing things by the book.
Then Vikram “the Maharajah” Govindan (Adeel Akhtar), a fabulously wealthy businessman whom the couple met in the first film, invites them to his wedding to a Parisian (Mélanie Laurent, underused) on his private island. The wedding is all fun, games, obscenely lavish gift baskets and Bollywood-style musical numbers — until Vik is kidnapped, just before he’s set to make a triumphant entrance by elephant. His bodyguard is slain in the process, giving the caper nominal “murder mystery” status.
The Spitzes spring into action, but Miller and his team of agents are already on the case, outclassing them by a mile. As the action moves to Paris, where a ransom drop is scheduled, Nick and Audrey find themselves in chaos mode, though they still take time to freshen their hair and outfits between plot twists.
Will you like it?
This bumbling suburban couple is no Nick and Nora Charles, and that’s the movie’s joke. Well, one joke among several, a handful of which aren’t bad. There’s a wink-wink about the aforementioned outfit changes that capitalizes on Aniston’s skill at playing a woozy innocent; she made me believe that Audrey would pause in the midst of a car chase for a makeover. French actor Dany Boon has a ruffled charm as the vain, vaping Inspector Delacroix. Toward the end, Jillian Bell (of Brittany Runs a Marathon) pops in for an absurdist cameo that seems to belong in a better movie.
Most of the wit doesn’t land so well, though. The screenplay gives Nick and Audrey more tiresome bickering than sparkling banter. A series of cracks about Nick’s obsession with the cheese in his gift basket feels endless. At least the cheese becomes a plot point, which can’t be said for an entire scene that pivots on a European’s mispronunciation of “Spitz” as “Shitz.”
Whoever market researches these generically titled movies seems to have concluded that viewers turn on the TV mainly for vicarious experience of the lifestyles of billionaires. The first half of Murder Mystery 2 features long, uneventful scenes during which we’re invited to gawp at Vik’s CGI-enhanced luxurious island digs and dream wedding venue. The gift baskets alone take up an unsettling amount of screen time. The Bollywood number is equally gratuitous, but at least it’s fun.
In the second half, the movie’s pacing and plotting heat up, as it becomes a thrill ride that culminates in a standoff on the Eiffel Tower. There’s an extended car chase through the streets of Paris, a fire in a château and all sorts of double crosses that don’t really matter because none of the characters is interesting even as a caricature.
What there’s almost none of is sleuthing. If the first Murder Mystery paid its respects to Agatha Christie, this one barely nods to mystery conventions. It’s too busy trying — and mostly failing — to achieve the sweet spot of frenetic silliness that Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum staked out with The Lost City, a movie that more successfully married modern pacing to nostalgic plotting.
For all its faults, though, Murder Mystery 2 has a good-natured, what-the-hell quality. You can’t really hate a movie that wears its slapdash craft on its sleeve. (Revealing his dastardly plan to explode the Eiffel Tower, a villain fumes, “I hate the French!”) If you’re nostalgic for the days when you could channel surf and watch three bad movies at once (plus the occasional commercial), Murder Mystery 2 comes close to replicating that experience for the streaming era. Sometimes we all need to graze on televisual junk food and absorb nothing.
If you like this, try…
Just Go With It (2011; Freevee, Hulu, rentable): If you enjoy the comic chemistry of Aniston and Sandler, you can also see them cavorting in Hawaii in this rom-com that’s even broader than the Murder Mystery series.
Glass Onion (2022; Netflix): Or, if goofy murder mysteries with sleuthing are more your thing, try Rian Johnson’s star-studded sequel to Knives Out. While it might be accused of liberal smugness, the humor here is several levels of sophistication above Murder Mystery 2.
“The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window” (eight episodes, 2022; Netflix): “Generic satire of popular thing” seems to be a territory that Netflix is determined to dominate. This thriller spoof does feature a decent running joke of Kristen Bell swigging from a ginormous wine glass.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2023.
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