Nick Spitz (Adam Sandler) is a detective for the NYPD who is about to celebrate his fifteenth anniversary with his wife, Audrey (Jennifer Aniston), a hairdresser longing for the romantic and exciting life she constantly reads about in her mystery novels. She yearns for her husband to give her the attention she feels she deserves, which only results in her unintentionally forcing Nick to book a European holiday for their belated honeymoon. En route to Italy, they meet Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans), a charming British aristocrat who offers the couple the chance to accompany him on his uncle’s private yacht, not revealing that he is only inviting them as a way of annoying his very wealthy relatives, who are not particularly fond of the idea of a pair of strangers being at this very private event. When it is revealed that his uncle is Malcolm Quince (Terence Stamp), a world-famous billionaire who has recently wed his nephew’s ex-fiancee and is on the verge of writing everyone except her out of his will, tensions rise to the point where he’s murdered in cold blood. Now it’s up to Nick and Audrey to solve the murder – or at least they have to because they turn out to be the prime suspects, a pair of strangers who just so happened to be present on the private yacht of a man they had never met, and who dies as a result of what can only be a plot designed by a pair of killers. Using his experience gained from years in the police workforce, and her knowledge of murder mystery novels, the Spitzes have to not only find the murderer, but prove their own innocence as well, and hilarity naturally ensues.

Perhaps I’ve lost my mind, or maybe could be considered a sadist for even watching in the first place, but Murder Mystery is truly a lot of fun. By no means a serious film, nor one that isn’t filled with glaring flaws, this is a purely entertaining piece of trite garbage that works in ways no one could possibly have expected, even if it had all the elements that should have indicated that it would be a diverting experience at the very least. Arguably, I am trying to broaden my horizons by exploring the work of Adam Sandler in closer detail (for reasons that will be outlined at a later date), but there’s something about Murder Mystery that seems almost impossible to dislike, even when the film itself is filled with problems that prevent it from being anything other than passable at the very best. Directed by Kyle Newacheck, an interesting new voice in comedy, and written by James Vanderbilt (this alone qualifying Murder Mystery to be given the opportunity to prove itself, as he wrote Zodiac, inarguably one of the greatest crimes films of the past twenty years), and featuring an incredible cast plucked from all around the world, the film is just about as charming as one would expect from this material. Perhaps never being able to overcome some of the insurmountable challenges that the film encountered along the way, Murder Mystery strangely doesn’t ever feel like it’s trying too hard, and when all the small but significant merits add up, the result is something very special, even if it may not be appealing for those looking for more engaging cinema.

Something that we need to understand about Adam Sandler is that, unless we are told differently from the outset, we’re not supposed to take his work all that seriously. He’s made a career from playing derivatives of the same buffoon, only changing his name and perhaps adding an accent here and there. Murder Mystery doesn’t necessarily change this, but it also doesn’t mean that Sandler isn’t doing some very solid work here, even though he’s not stepping out of his comfort zone for even a brief moment. However, while this film is not something that should be taken seriously in any way, the film is actually much better than some of the actor’s previous work, and while Sandler doesn’t hit the incredible heights that he has been known to do on a few occasions, this film does demonstrate precisely why he’s such an enormously popular actor. He possesses an everyman charm that works so well here, especially because Nick Spitz is a character who benefits from just being an average man – Sandler doesn’t avoid the broad comedy, but rather opts to tone it down considerably, playing an ordinary middle-aged man who finds himself in an outrageous situation. It also helps that the film reunites Sandler with Jennifer Aniston, an actress who has constantly proven herself to be incredibly gifted, especially when she is allowed to just play a character who relies on her exceptional charms. Murder Mystery is not the best work Sandler or Aniston has done, and it can’t be considered even close to challenging to either of them. The difference here is that this isn’t a film designed to push them as actors – it’s an offbeat comedy that relies on their wonderful chemistry and marvellous ability to work through these outrageous situations in a way that is, above anything else, just purely hilarious.

The film also has some memorable cameos from an international cast, which is always something that is appreciated when it comes to major productions like this. This is a globe-trotting thriller, so it only makes sense that the cast fundamentally demonstrates this. Whether it’s Luke Evans at his most devilish, or Terence Stamp at his most sinister (and in playing a character named “Malcolm”, he’s not doing any favours for the theories that he and Malcolm McDowell are essentially the same person), or actors who may be unfamiliar to wider audiences, like John Kani, Adeel Akhtar or Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who populate this tremendous cast, Murder Mystery is very generous to its actors. Even Dany Boon, in playing the archetypal French detective brought in to investigate the murder, is given a lot to do, to the point where he is only a few moments away from giving one of the most hilarious performances of the year (he possesses the rare but admirable skill Leslie Nielsen demonstrated in Airplane!, whereby through playing the role completely straight, the performance becomes astronomically funnier). Sandler certainly has clout in the industry, so the fact that it wasn’t a matter of attracting any of his more famous friends to collaborate here, but rather to give a platform to a wider range of performers from around the world, gives Murder Mystery a great deal of goodwill. Even those who may not be entirely taken with the story can’t deny that the cast is terrific and certainly elevates a script plagued with problems, often even outright concealing some of the more troubling flaws.

Murder Mystery is not a perfect film, but it can’t be considered a failure in any way, mainly because it does have ambition, even if it’s not always very clear. The merits that exist in this film are really restricted to the cast, which we’ve already mentioned, and the storyline, or rather the execution of a relatively trite set of conventions. This film is cliched by design – Vanderbilt wrote it in such a way that it feels ripped directly from the pages of the most exhaustingly hackneyed mystery novels, only with the story here challenging some of these conventions by subverting them – it isn’t the most intelligent way this kind of story could’ve been executed, but it does have its merits nonetheless, with the film being perfectly adept at taking on the murder mystery genre in a way that may not feel revolutionary, but is refreshing in its own way. It’s a film designed for those who can abandon logic for the duration of the film and suspend their disbelief to the point where some of the clear narrative inconsistencies aren’t really much of a problem and can be easily forgotten, granted we’re able to look beyond them and just focus on whatever zany twists and turns Sandler and his co-conspirators are willing to take. There’s an intelligence underlying this film that facilitates the outright stupidity of the characters, which creates an imbalance that oddly works in the context of a film that is not afraid to just descend into complete absurdity because everyone involved knows this isn’t going to be a film that defines the genre but rather comments on it in a very funny way.

Murder Mystery doesn’t always work as well as it should at times, and Vanderbilt’s very clever screenplay deserved better than a neophyte like Newacheck to bring it to life in a way that felt authentic and didn’t fall victim to the same tropes. However, the charm underlying this film is more than sufficient for us to forego some of its issues because this is essentially nothing more than just a film designed to entertain. Where the film falters is in its refusal to actually extend beyond the confines of a script that only outlined the story, where so much of what makes this genre work is in the execution, with the director’s approach being one relatively straightforward, which does make sense considering what they were trying to do, but doesn’t allow the film to actually go further than it can – but it’s always a great sign when the biggest problem with a mindless Adam Sandler comedy is that it didn’t reach its full potential. Murder Mystery is just a lot of fun and something that shouldn’t ever really be taken all that seriously. It manages to be an entertaining European romp with charming performances from a wonderful ensemble, and a story captivating enough to hold our attention, and while he can’t dismiss the problems, we can never say that Murder Mystery is boring because it does meet the fundamental goals it sets out to achieve, which was just to take a taut genre and present it in a slightly different way, not necessarily reinventing it, but rather refreshing it in subtle, sometimes even inarguably endearing ways.