Movie Review: Murder Mystery (2019)

Synopsis: Already lying to his wife, Audrey, about not passing his detective's exam, a police sergeant, Nick Spitz, decides to book a spur-of-the-moment European vacation to avoid disappointing her on their 15th wedding anniversary. On the airplane, Audrey befriends the nephew of elderly billionaire Malcolm Quince and secures an invitation to cruise on a yacht and attend a celebration in honor of his uncle's marriage. When Quince is murdered seconds after revealing his intentions to cut everyone except his new bride out of the will, there is a roomful of people with motive. However, the local police consider Audrey and Nick the primary suspects.

Who's in it? The movie stars Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, Luke Evans, Terence Stamp and Dany Boon.


Review: When I first came across this movie on Netflix last week, I was intrigued. But, since my wife was out of town, I decided to hold off on watching it until she got back. We did that last night and I have to say I was very impressed with it.

To be honest, the fact I liked this movie was actually a bit of a surprise, mostly because I always thought Adam Sandler's comedies were a bit hit or miss. Sometimes they are really fun to watch while, other times, there is just too much crude humor to make the movie watchable. And, unfortunately, the same could actually be said about Aniston, who I like as an actress but is sometimes cast in forgettable films. However, this was definitely one of the exceptions to that.

There were a couple things that really stood out for me when it came to this film. One of the main ones was the mystery was actually pretty decent. Since Quince (Stamp) wasn't a likable guy to begin with and was cutting everyone in his family out of his will, pretty much everyone in the room with him at the time of his death had motive, especially as the movie progressed and some of the family's secrets were revealed.

In fact, there was part of me that was wondering if maybe Inspector de la Croix (Boon) was in on it too. This is mostly because was putting all his time and effort into arresting Nick (Sandler) and Audrey (Aniston) even though they were literally the only people on the yacht with no motive for murder, though they did seem to have a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I even have to admit, I loved the ending, which hasn't always been the case with movies lately. This included the surprise twist and eventual car chase (which was a little drawn out but worked for me from a comedy standpoint).

My only real complaint about this movie is it didn't do a very good job of convincing me Nick really deserved to be a detective. He was supposed to be smart enough to pass the tests and just did poorly when under pressure. But, it seemed like Audrey did much more detective work than he did and, ultimately, the bad guy was only revealed by process of elimination because most of the suspects were dead. What's he supposed to do when he gets back to the United States? Have his wife assisting him with every police investigation?

Final Opinion: Yes, there are probably some other things I could spend a great deal of time ripping apart when it came to this movie. But, remembering it is supposed to be a comedy, I'm letting those slide because I did enjoy watching this film. I'd recommend it as a result.

My Grade: A

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