I can’t imagine anyone holds high expectations for the results of Adam Sandler’s $250m (£202m) deal with Netflix – not the company, its subscribers, or Sandler himself. Much of his straight-to-streaming output, such as 2016’s The Do-Over or 2017’s Sandy Wexler, seems purposefully made for quiet nights in, when the toil of the week has rotted away any ability to concentrate.
Arguably, Murder Mystery (2019) – in which he and Jennifer Aniston played a hapless couple trapped in a real-life game of Cluedo while on holiday – achieved a pinnacle in mindless distraction. It wasn’t all that funny. It wasn’t all that clever. But it was eminently watchable. It’s also funny to see how much its sequel riffs on Knives Out, seeing as the original Murder Mystery preceded that Rian Johnson film and the whodunnit craze it spawned. Because, essentially, Murder Mystery 2 is what you watch if it seems like Glass Onion might require too many brain cells.
