By Anna Husted EBS FILM CRITIC
Over the last four
year, Adam Sandler’s career has been defined by a series of, well, terrible
movies that are a result of an extensive acting and producing contract with
online streaming powerhouse NETFLIX. Low points include “Sandy Wexler,” “The Ridiculous
6,” and “The Do-Over,” yet amongst these flops also includes one of the best
films he’s been involved, “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” and
while he didn’t produce the latter, there is hope to be had.
Sandler and NETFLIX’s
latest collaboration confirms the notion with “Murder Mystery”—finally, a
Sandler-produced film I can get behind again.
“Murder Mystery” is centers
on the Spitz couple, played by Sandler and the magnificent Jennifer Aniston, a
married couple that never went on a honeymoon trip. Aniston’s Audrey is a
bubbly, funny hairdresser from New York, while Sandler plays Nick, a deadbeat
cop with bad aim. Here’s the crux of the story—Audrey believes Nick is a
detective when in reality he failed his detective exam three times and didn’t
have the heart to tell her about the final round of failure. To continue hiding
his career secrets, he distracts her by finally booking the long-coveted
honeymoon to Europe.
En route across the
pond, Audrey meets Charles Cavendish, played by Luke Evans, a billionaire who
invites the Spitzes on his private yacht in the Mediterranean. Cavendish’s
entire family will also be in attendance, but it’s revealed they don’t exactly
get along.
The first night of
the cruise the patriarch of the family is found murdered after the vessel’s
lights mysteriously cut. While the story and plot are clichés of the murder
mystery genre, that doesn’t really matter because it’s about the laughs, as you
may have guessed with Sandler at the helm.
Aniston’s comedic
timing is perfectly engineered here—arguably better than Sandler’s. The pair
exhibits performance chemistry, giving power to lines that aren’t necessarily
funny. A portion of the plot’s humor rests on the fact that Audrey and Nick are
pinned as the No. 1 suspects, goofily trying to solve the murder themselves in
between shrimp cocktails and accidentally destroying centuries-old libraries.
In the climactic car
chase scene, which, of course, there had to be, Audrey and Nick jump into a car
to follow the bad guy only to find that it’s British made and Audrey is on the
driver’s side, not the passenger’s. This joke plays off of stereotypical gender
roles, but it’s successful because they are both surprised to be in the seats
they are in. Regardless, Audrey takes the wheel like a pro.
While Sandler’s
films appeal to some of the lower forms of comedy, they’re still funny and it’s
fine to admit you like them, even the bad ones of the past. Roger Ebert critic
Brian Tallerico calls “Murder Mystery” “reasonable escapism” measuring it
better than the last few Sandler has produced for NETFLIX. But I’ll do “Murder
Mystery” one better because it’s an Agatha Christie-type comedy. Who doesn’t
love a good murder mystery and a good laugh?
“Murder Mystery” is
now available for streaming on NETFLIX.
Anna Husted has a master’s
in film studies from New York University. In Big Sky she can be found hiking a
mountain or at the movies at Lone Peak Cinema. When not gazing at the silver
screen or watching her new favorite TV show, she’s reading, fishing or
roughhousing with her cat, Indiana Jones.
