Adam Sandler is one of those actors you either love or hate. His movies can feel like they’re all the same or that he’s barely trying. Yet, that is often what is most appealing about him as an actor. You know what you’re going to get. Frequently, whether or not a movie of his is a hit or a miss is how good of a mood you’re in to watch him push the envelope on comedy.
That doesn’t mean his movies are objectively good or bad. At the moment, it can make you laugh and be truly humorless. At another moment in time, it can be the cringiest thing in the world. Those comedies which rely on certain types of humor more than ever. Murder Mystery features one of my favorite pairs – Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. How they work together isn’t a mystery. The pair enjoys one another’s company. Seeing their second collaboration was a treat, but it was also the primary reason I wanted to see the film.
Audrey (Aniston) and Nick Spitz (Sandler) are a frustrated married couple whose relationship has fallen into a rut after fifteen years. Having always wanted to go to Europe, Audrey confronts her husband, who hastily lies that he has already booked a trip for their fifteenth wedding anniversary. As often happens in films like this, one lie spirals into another, which grows bigger and bigger until it finally spirals out of control. Encouraged by her coworkers and customers at the hair salon she works at, Audrey ends up ecstatic when he tells her that they’re finally going to Europe. All to get out of another lie which resulted in them fighting. While it’s clear that the pair are truly in love with one another, watching them snipe as if this were a friends-to-lovers storyline is hilarious.
While on the plane, trying to escape from her everyday reality, Audrey sneaks into first class, where she meets Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans) after asking for earplugs – which the flight attendant is happy to help her with. For nine dollars. While there, she sees the complementary earplugs that are offered to first class passengers, leading to her fateful meeting, which will spiral into the plot of the film. When the same flight attendant comes back to haul Audrey to her economy class seat, all Charles needs to do to keep Audrey in his orbit is to mention his name – chastening the flight attendant and sending her on her way. Is it any wonder that Luke Evans played a phenomenal Gaston in Beauty and the Beast?
Audrey, whose love of mystery novels, is shown throughout the beginning of the film and helps guide the film as they fall into a mystery of their own. Related to Malcolm Quince (Terence Stamp), an aging billionaire who apparently stole away Charles’ fiancé.
When Charles invites Audrey and Nick to join him and his family on their yacht, heading to Monaco for the Grand Prix and trying to ruin the festivities as best he can, the pair end up on the yacht. There wouldn’t be a film, after all, if they didn’t.
Every good murder mystery (entirely subjective, I know) is circled around a group of wealthy people who have some reason to kill the victim. Because of the circumstances of a good murder mystery, all of the suspects also have the means and opportunity – primarily because the murder occurs at a point in which the cast is a closed circle. For Murder Mystery, it’s on a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean. Hilariously, the varying suspects have every reason to blame those “Americans” who essentially horned in on their family trip. Through hilarious contrivances, they truly become the prime suspects. After all, why would any of the family or friends of the deceased have anything to do with it?
The suspects, of course, run the gamut of nationalities to poke fun at specific caricatures and set most of those stereotypes on fire. Shioli Kutsuna plays Suzi Nakamura, Charles’ ex-fiancé and Malcolm’s current fiancé. David Williams plays Tobey, Malcolm’s son and heir. Gemma Arterton is actress Grace Ballard, who is more than keen to gossip about Charles and Suki with the Americans who have crashed the weekend. John Kani is Colonel Ulenga, the former bodyguard of Malcolm and his best friend, who saved Malcolm from a bombing. Ólafur Darri Ólafsson is Sergei, who is Ulenga’s new bodyguard. Adeel Akhtar is the Maharajah Vikram who hilariously manipulates Audrey and Nick into bowing to him as a form of greeting before breaking out in laughter, revealing himself to be the life of the party. The final member of the ragtag group of wealthy elites is Juan Carlos (Luis Gerardo Méndez), a formula one racecar driver who is incapable of understanding English.
Of the suspects, Adeel Akhtar, as Maharaja Vikram, is clearly having a blast even as the bodies begin to pile up around him. Is it any wonder that, when the sequel rolled around, he was given a much more central role? Gemma Arterton is also eating every scene that she’s in, giving the perfect blend of “uppity actress” with “wealthy gossip” as she sashays from scene to scene.
The last true main character is Inspector Delacroix (Dany Boone), who is sent out to investigate the suspicious murder. Because of Nick’s lies, it is easy to believe that he was the one to murder Malcolm Quince – providing him with a splashy murder that he could solve to hone, and prove, his skills as a detective with his wife, the lover of all things mystery, as his willing accomplice.
This plays on the typical issues that stem from different social and economic classes when law enforcement is involved. Despite all good reason, the wealthy are often given the silk-gloved approach no matter how heinous the crime, whereas those of the lower classes are all but smashed into submission. Despite the glaring motive for everybody else aboard, the authorities are quick to seize on Nick and Audrey because they are a convenient scapegoat, whatever the reality of the situation might be. Delacroix, though, is at least interested in figuring out what actually happened and, when push comes to shove, offers his assistance.
As is typical of films in the genre, despite the group’s supposed close-knit relationships, they are spiteful and vindictive to one another without much provocation. The fact that they band together to blame Audrey and Nick for the murder is more out of convenience than a true belief that the pair could have done it. Before the murder even occurs, Malcolm declares Suzi as his sole heir, setting the stage for his murder – apparently. After all, $70 billion is one hell of a motive for any group of friends and family who expected to receive something from him.
Where Audrey has a love for murder mysteries, which drives her to investigate the original murder as it spirals into something more complex, we can see Nick in action as a “fake” detective. Early on, when he was talking with his close friend, Jimmy Stern (Erik Griffin), it was established that he knew all the answers but could not pass the examination. This knowledge helps him and Audrey as much as the clichés that come out of your standard murder mystery novel. However, we are also informed that, despite his ability to derive information, Nick is a terrible shot – which comes into play throughout the film.
Murder Mystery is not afraid to where its clichés on its sleeve, just as much as it plays with the conventions and tropes of the genre to hilarious – if at times fatal – degrees. With the quick succession of murders that occur, Nick and Audrey have no choice but to find the killer as Interpol hunts them. What follows is a hilarious trek across Western Europe, giving the couple a vacation that neither of them expected but desperately needed.
Lloydd Marshall Books 