Murder Mystery 2 review: the only mystery is why it isn't better

Netflix’s first Murder Mystery could charitably be read as a Knives Out parody, with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston bungling their way through an Agatha Christie-ish set-up featuring a dead patriarch and many murderous, angling heirs. The sequel, which borrows Glass Onion’s conceit of a billionaire’s invite-only party on a private island, aspires more to be an action movie than a classic whodunit. The mystery element is weaker, depending upon two clues, max; and while some of the action sequences are nicely staged, there aren’t enough of them, or enough big laughs, to make this a solid action comedy.

You want to root for Sandler and Aniston; as a married couple, they strike the perfect balance between bickering, passive-aggressiveness, brutally honest mutual assessment, and genuine camaraderie. (Sandler’s former rom-com partner, Drew Barrymore, worked better as a dream courtship girl, whereas Aniston’s groove with Sandler is more hot-but-neurotic wife.) It’s too bad returning writer James Vanderbilt (David Fincher’s Zodiac and, somehow, The Amazing Spider-Man, Darkness Falls, and White House Down) doesn’t quite know what to do with the two stars here. In the first film, they were clearly marks who became accidental heroes. Four years on, inspired by their victory, they’re supposedly professional private investigators who’ve gotten better at some skills … and really, really not better at others.

We’re supposed to believe, for example, that both Sandler’s Nick and Aniston’s Audrey are pretty good in a fight, yet they still cannot use weapons despite ample practice. Besides that, we must accept that a guilty party who has scouted them pretty well would put them through almost the same paces they triumphed over when they were more naive. It’s a set-up too contrived to feel real, yet not quite over-the-top enough to be hilarious. Watch Paul Feig’s Spy instead for a better take on the untested yet book-smart protagonist.

Three of the major surviving characters from the first Murder Mystery return. One-note caricatures Vik (Adeel Akhtar) and his eternally injured bodyguard Col Ulenga (John Kani) are here again, as is the slightly more developed Inspector de la Croix (Dany Boon). It’s Vik’s wedding day, so of course he wants his friends to come, all expenses paid. Yet before long, he’s kidnapped and his newer bodyguard is found dead. Considering how little the latter gets to say or do, the murder aspect is pretty trivial this time around, but Ransom Mystery just doesn’t have the same alliterative ring.