The Reel Review
A married couple trying to start a career as private investigators find themselves in another whodunit when one of the few survivors from their last outing four years ago is kidnapped at his lavish, destination wedding. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston reprise their characters in this sequel to the the 2019 Netflix mystery/comedy Murder Mystery.
Everything about Murder Mystery 2 is mine-numbing in its averageness – the title, the jokes, and in particular, the story. Glass Onion this is not. The only real improvement from the first film is a pricier production budget, which includes a couple of nice, exotic settings – an island destination and some decent stunt work in Paris. Everything else feels phoned in.
The supporting cast of one-note characters includes Mark Strong, Melanie Laurent (Operation Finale, Inglourious Basterds) and Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim). If you loved the first film, want to see visuals of Paris, or are jonesing to see Sandler/Aniston doing Indian wedding dance moves, you may enjoy this mindless comedy while folding laundry, but for everyone else, Murder Mystery 2 is proof that two is not always better than one.
REEL FACTS
• Murder Mystery 2 is Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston’s third movie together, after 2011’s Just Go with It and 2019’s Murder Mystery.
• French actress, filmmaker and singer Mélanie Laurent is the recipient of two César awards and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.
• Murder Mystery 2 was filmed in Hawaii, the Caribbean, Paris and Rybnik, Poland (using a model of the Eiffel Tower)
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