Murder Mystery 2

Directed by Jeremy Garelick, Murder Mystery 2 follows Adam Sandler’s Nick and Jennifer Aniston’s Audrey as they attempt to solve the mystery of their friend’s (Adeel Akhtar’s The Maharajah) kidnapping. Filmmaker Garelick, armed with a script by James Vanderbilt, delivers a sporadically watchable yet predominantly forgettable comedy that is, for the most part, foiled by its exhaustingly slick and generic sensibilities, as the movie, which runs a short-but-not-short-enough 89 minutes, progresses through a by-the-numbers storyline that’s compounded by a recurring emphasis on lackluster set pieces and unfunny asides. (It doesn’t help, either, that both Sandler and Aniston phone in their work to such an extent that it becomes impossible to root for their characters’ efforts and exploits.) And although Garelick has admittedly peppered the proceedings with a few engaging sequences, including (and especially) an over-the-top car chase through the streets of Paris, Murder Mystery 2 builds towards a thoroughly tedious climactic stretch that’s hardly as satisfying or compelling as Garelick has surely intended – which does, in the final analysis, cement the picture’s place as just another lazy, half-baked endeavor from Sandler and company.

** out of ****