Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

Finally getting to go on their long promised European adventure – The Spitz’, Audrey (Jennifer Aniston) and Nick (Adam Sandler) trade up from a minibus to luxury yacht when they befriend the wealthy and brooding Viscount, Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans) on the plane.

Unfortunately, sailing with the rich soon becomes dining with the dead when Charles’  billionaire uncle the old and cruel Malcolm Quince (Terance Stamp) winds up dead.

With the blame on their heads and a killer on their tail, the couple uses their knowledge of crime solving both learned, from Nick’s time as an NYPD officer, and read, from the wealth of mystery books Audrey has consumed, to crack the case and clear their name.

I wasn’t expecting much when I chose to watch this movie; I pretty much just wanted to switch off, and with that in mind, Murder Mystery was everything I expected it to be.

An easy enough to follow storyline with a wealth of suspects to choose from. It also did well by playing ever so subtly on other murder mystery tropes.

One of my main pluses for the movie was how ‘normal’ Nick and Audrey were in comparison to the other characters. It was like they took themselves out of the situation, and were looking in. They were excitable when it came to solving the mystery – like it was a book or a dream, and not actually part of their lives. It was an interesting and pretty unique take on characteristics of protagonists in the genre.

The comedy for me was mostly lost when it came to Sandlers’ Nick. Firstly, I would also have liked to see him do a little more ‘policing’ and secondly, he seemed to be performing a whole other type of comedy to his fellow cast. Where the suspects were more on the slightly theatrical side and Audrey gave off the air of humour – he was bordering on over the top/silly in his unaffected demeanour.

The ending alluded to the couple embarking on another Murder Mystery adventure – and you know what, in the same vein of those easy and formulaic Hallmark Mystery movies – I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea. After all, it’s a light and easy mystery movie, and we’ve proved as an audience that in that genre you can’t really go wrong.