Murder Mystery stars Adam Sandler as a police officer named Nick Spitz, who’s strapped for cash and has a hard time making ends meet. However, his 15th-wedding anniversary is coming up, and he promised his wife Audrey, played by Jennifer Aniston, years ago that for this anniversary, they’d go to Europe, and he now has to make due on that promise. On the way over, they meet billionaire Charles Cavendish, played by Luke Evans, who invites them to his family’s yacht for a party, where they soon get wrapped up in, as the title suggests, a murder mystery.
The film is the fourth collaboration between Sandler and Netflix, not counting his lead role in Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories, as that wasn’t produced by Sandler’s production company, Happy Madison. Sandler was once a king at the box office. Despite nearly all of his films receiving mixed to negative critical reception, he was a box office draw, with his brand of juvenile humor connecting with younger audiences at the time.
Now Sandler has shifted his focus from the theaters to streaming services, and despite the change in distributor, if there’s one thing Murder Mystery proves is that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. While Sandler isn’t usually a hit with critics, he actually is a talented actor, and has given solid performances when collaborating with filmmakers like Baumbach or Paul Thomas Anderson. The stories are more mature, and Sandler’s everyman persona really helps those characters feel real.
Though when he works on a movie through his own production company, he mainly goes with a particular schtick. The aforementioned everyman persona is used for him to portray a schlub, slacker, or someone with a generic underdog story. He’s a goof, plays juvenile pranks, makes observations that arguably a high-schooler would make, yet somehow always gets the girl at the end, despite being considerably less mature than his romantic interest. The only thing that changes is the setting.
And Murder Mystery follows that formula used in nearly all of Sandler’s other productions, and feels in a way just like many of his earlier movies, having never really evolved with the times. He still makes the same kind of wisecracks, and he always interacts with at least one character who’s essentially a cartoon character in what’s otherwise supposed to be a more realistic group of people. In this case, one of the individuals at Cavendish’s party is Vikram Govindam, played by Adeel Akhtar. He’s a young Maharajah, who’s actually hip and talks using street lingo while everyone else is more uptight and composed, feeling borderline like an offensive stereotype.
And like with nearly all of Sandler’s other movies, this one feels more like a series of scenes that are set up more because the script calls for it, rather than feeling like a cohesive transition. There’s a subplot involving Nick failing his detective exam and hiding it from Audrey for no other reason just to create conflict down the road. There’s another moment in which Terrence Stamp plays the patriarch of Cavendish’s family, insulting all of his family before going to sign his new will in front of them, which more than likely no one else in real life would do, other than to set up plot points for the rest of this movie. The list can go on.
It’s as if the team behind the film had a series of loose ideas in mind for scenes, and just needed to find some ways for them to all connect, even if logically they didn’t flow together. There are pointless arguments that don’t go anywhere, expendable characters that feel present because the plot calls for it and nothing more, as well as debates about mundane topics that add nothing to the story nor aren’t funny, the latter of which being one of this movie’s biggest problems. Nearly all of the jokes fall flat. There are some that rely on heavy-handed product placement, some that make references for the sake of making references, and others that feel like something out of a cliched sitcom, such as two characters hiding under a bed while another two have sex.
The only really charm this movie has is whenever Sandler and Aniston are together and simply have each other to play off of. It’s apparent they have chemistry together, and the way they play off one another does allow the audience to buy them as a believable couple. While at first they do get caught up in worn-out squabbles that have been overdone in many other romantic comedies and arguably could have been cut here, once they plot kicks off and they have to work together, they actually can be a bit of fun to watch together at times. It’s just unfortunate they don’t have better material to work with that would allow both of them to really shine.
Murder Mystery is Adam Sandler and his team doing what they know best, and for loyalists who thoroughly enjoy his style of humor, more than likely this will be right up their alley. Though for those who aren’t already fans of the guy, this won’t win anyone over. It’s often contrived, painfully unfunny, and often sets itself up for situations seen in countless other movies, including some of Sandler’s other films. While Sandler still has other projects lined up outside of his usual friend group that are sure to be promising, when it comes to his own production company, it’s clear he’s comfortable doing what he’s doing, and at this point, it’s highly doubtful that will change anytime soon.
Recommendation: Avoid It
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