Chaotic Murder Mystery 2 forgot to bring the murder mystery
It may be called Murder Mystery 2 but the most surprising thing about this whodunit is you’re not going to care who did it.
Movies
Don't miss out on the headlines from Movies. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The follow-up to the surprisingly jaunty and watchable Murder Mystery has in-built appeal – the breezy charms of Jennifer Aniston and an Adam Sandler with the buffoonery dialled down.
But having that in its arsenal also made Murder Mystery 2 lazy. It knows it doesn’t have to make sense or have a decent plot because the main attraction was always the star power of its leads.
And there’s no denying Aniston and Sandler work well together on screen. Both veterans of the business, they were also previously in Just Go With It. Their comedic timing and the confidence of their chemistry make for a persuasive middle-class married couple. It feels lived-in.
So that’s the good part about Murder Mystery 2, the amiable allure of just watching them do their thing, together.
The rest of Murder Mystery 2? Oh, boy. You can leave it.
The tricky thing with sequels, especially one in a genre such as a whodunit, is the temptation is to go bigger and bolder. Can the death be more elaborate? Can the puzzle be more layered? Can the peril be more dangerous?
How do you create more scale without losing the thing that made it work in the first place? Managing that step up is a tricky endeavour and even better filmmakers have faltered.
That Murder Mystery didn’t make it work wouldn’t be so glaring if Rian Johnson hadn’t just masterfully done it with Knives Out and Glass Onion only three months earlier. It’s an unfavourable comparison.
Johnson understood that you can elevate the world but still maintain fidelity to the genre. Murder Mystery 2 just went bigger but forgot the fact it’s supposed to be a whodunit and not just a wild European caper.
It gathered a group of suspects and it culled them one by one, but it didn’t build any investment in the question of who was actually responsible. Sure, it was fun to see Jodie Turner-Smith ham it up, or Mark Strong being very Mark Strong, and it’s always fun to be in Paris, but it’s all bitsy stuff.
The overall picture is chaotic as unconvincing doublecrosses are revealed, characters are dispatched in quick succession, and wildly disproportionate stunts go on for too long.
The plot has the broad strokes of a whodunit. Nick (Sandler) and Audrey (Aniston) have started their own private detective agency but business isn’t so good. When an unexpected wedding invitation from the Majarajah (Adeel Akhtar) arrives, they jetset off once again and find themselves in the middle of a convoluted kidnapping plot.
The movie also robs them of any drive as things keep happening to them, never because of them. They humbly bumble through and are even accused of being the orchestrators. Who did it? You’re not going to care.
Murder Mystery 2 is not as offensive as some of Sandler’s most embarrassing efforts but in its attempt to be both looser and grander ends up being a tonal misfire. It may be called Murder Mystery 2 but that’s not what the movie is.
Rating: 2/5
Murder Mystery 2 is on Netflix from Friday, March 31 at 7pm AEDT
Originally published as Chaotic Murder Mystery 2 forgot to bring the murder mystery
A-listers with ‘bad attitudes’ called out
Chris Pratt has ripped into celebrities who have been difficult to work with on movie sets as he promoted his new film at Comic-Con.
Actor’s awkward Swift audition: ‘Intimate’
Eddie Redmayne has opened up about his “intimate” screen test with Taylor Swift – and how it all went so wrong.