Movie Review: Murder Mystery

A bit ago, Netflix released a new movie starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. I’d heard from somewhere or other that it was pretty good. Finding ourselves in a bit of a lull, Denisa and I decided to try it out.

“Pretty good” was being quite generous, in retrospect. I’m still not sure where I picked up the assessment, as when I’m looking at reviews in hindsight, “pretty meh” would seem to be more accurate. (45% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6 on IMDB, 38 on Metacritic.) But the movie wasn’t completely without merit. It was diverting enough, and was all in all more interesting than doing nothing, and not painful to watch.

How’s that for a recommendation for you?

The things I disliked about the movie were mainly its efforts at humor, and Adam Sandler. He plays a doofus, and the character didn’t go over well with me at all. It just kept feeling to me like Adam Sandler playing the role of someone who’s a doofus. And the humor . . . was pretty much non-existent. There were some mildly amusing things, but other than that, most of the humor seemed to want to rest on Adam Sandler being a doofus. I have liked many Adam Sandler movies in the past, so it’s not as if I’m predisposed to dislike him. But here . . . no.

Jennifer Aniston seemed a bit lost opposite him. Like she was trying to feed off the energy of his performance, with the result of being like a vampire trying to feed off the energy of a three week old corpse. “Chemistry” wouldn’t accurately describe the connection between Aniston and Sandler. “2nd Grade Science Experiment” is closer to it.

So what did I actually like about the film? For one thing, it was to murder mysteries what Scream was to horror movies. Aniston’s character is a big nut for the genre, and so when she finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery in Europe, she’s very excited. (Oh. That’s the premise. Did you care?) She goes about commenting about who it could be and who it couldn’t, and that was somewhat diverting.

The scenery was beautiful, and no expense had been spared on the main action sequence of the movie.

I don’t know. For a movie that’s Netflix’s “Biggest Movie Premier Ever” (which is one of the main things that caught my interest in the first place), it left a lot to be desired. If this is the best Netflix can mange for movies, maybe it’s time to stick to television series.

So . . . if you’ve heard “good things” about this movie, do yourself a favor and avoid it anyway. Unless you have nothing better to do for around two hours. I mean, if you’re stuck on a plane and it’s either watch this or listen to the man next to you snore for the next while, go get some headphones and enjoy.

3/10.

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