Murder Mystery won’t win any awards, but that doesn’t mean Netflix viewers aren’t obsessed with its new mystery-comedy.
According to an official Netflix Twitter account, Murder Mystery had the streaming service’s biggest opening weekend for a film when it came out this month, with more than 30.8 million accounts viewing it in three days.
That doesn’t make its success exactly equivalent to a truckload of ticket sales, but if Netflix is reporting its metrics correctly, that’s still an impressive audience. What made it so popular?
Murder Mystery is neither artful nor clever, but it’s not preachy, either. It’s fairly fun, and it seems like audiences are itching for more films like it.
Starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler’s mustache, Murder Mystery will induce the occasional chuckle as the pair play a middle-class couple taking a European vacation for their honeymoon …15 years after their marriage.
Nick (Sandler) and Audrey (Aniston) Spitz didn’t get around to having a honeymoon when they were first married, and years later, they haven’t done anything romantic together in a long time. Then, the night before their anniversary, Audrey complains that they never went to Europe together like they’d planned. A chagrined Nick, wisely forgetting the Amazon gift card he’d originally bought his wife, announces that they’re going to Europe. Suddenly, they’re on a plane.
The “clueless husband with frustrated wife” trope feels tiresome, and in typical Adam Sandler fashion, he leans in hard to the stereotype of the schlubby male. But Aniston, whose penchant for detective novels allows the film to make fun of its own genre, breaks out of the mold enough to carry the viewer along.
When billionaire Charles Cavendish invites Nick and Audrey to join him on his family yacht, the couple arrives expecting delicious food and beautiful rich people. But when one of those rich people is stabbed, they get accused of murder.
With its diverse list of suspects — including the gorgeous movie star, the quippy Maharaja, and the Spanish race car driver — the film riffs off Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. But it’s a better summer flick than the 2017 film of the same name. Murder on the Orient Express — the 2017 adaptation, not the 1974 film — suffered from too much philosophizing, as well as a painfully forced narrative about racism.
Murder Mystery may not have much self to be aware of, but its self-awareness makes the film work. It’s not trying to be anything more than fun, and to some extent, it succeeds. National Review‘s Kyle Smith writes that perhaps not since Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) has a film touched the comedy-murder-mystery genre. Older generations may recall Clue (1985) and Murder by Death (1976).
Recent comedies, though, are often weighed down by social justice. Both Long Shot and Hulu’s Shrill have languished in obscurity despite overly-generous reviews. Netflix did a better job with its new rom-com Always Be My Maybe, which told a good story without getting bogged down by a cultural narrative.
With Murder Mystery, the streaming giant could’ve made the film a little less juvenile, a little less cliche. But it accomplished something that other films of the summer have struggled to do.
Murder Mystery is not art, but it is fun. It stands out as a recent comedy only because it doesn’t take itself seriously.
