Murder Mystery – Film Review

A New York cop and his wife go on a European vacation to reinvigorate the spark in their marriage. A chance encounter leads to them being framed for the murder of an elderly billionaire.

Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned murder mystery comedy? I certainly do, but the idea of one starring Adam Sandler is rather unnerving to say the least. Before clicking play on Kyle Newacheck‘s Murder Mystery, I understood that this could have been one of the worst movies of Sandler’s career had the script not been good enough.

Thankfully, it’s not one of his worst movies but it certainly isn’t one of his best by a long shot, either. Rather, this is a relatively dull and uninspired murder mystery comedy that seems to have been heavily inspired by other films in the genre instead of attempting to be its own thing.

One of the main reasons why this movie didn’t really work for me was because I didn’t feel any sort of emotional attachment to the two lead characters. Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler in this movie have genuinely terrible chemistry and they don’t feel believable as a couple whatsoever.

I was sitting at my desk hoping that at one point in the film, they would have at least a couple of scenes where they felt like they had something going on between the two of them but it sadly never came. The entire time, all I could see were Aniston and Sandler instead of their characters.

The characters of Nick and Audrey Spitz are also surrounded by a bunch of other characters who are downright annoying, especially those of Malcolm Quince, Charles Cavendish, and Inspector de la Croix. You can tell the actors portraying each of these characters had quite a good amount of fun but they honestly deserved a whole lot better.

There were a couple of times in which Murder Mystery managed to make me laugh, but these moments were painfully few and far between. The only times I actually found myself laughing were usually in the first act, with there being very little to offer comedy-wise toward the end. There was, however, one joke early on that references The Steve Miller Band’s song “The Joker” that made me laugh hysterically.

This could have been a decently fun time had the script been polished up a bit more and if there were better actors portraying the two leads. Aniston and Sandler don’t work well together here and their chemistry feels outrageously forced and put-on for the camera. It’s painfully obvious.

Either way, though, this film could have easily been ten times worse than it was. As we know, Sandler is no stranger to making some of the worst comedies of all-time, and thankfully, this isn’t one of them. But, I will say, I much prefer Sandler as a dramatic actor even if he does have his comedic bright spots every so often.

Murder Mystery suffers from a painfully bland script with unlikable lead characters portrayed disappointingly poorly by Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.