Adam Sandler plays an unusual suspect – Variety

There is a fortune to lose and Adam Sandler is on the case – in fiction and reality. Ten years ago, "Murder Mystery", a caffeinated comedy that featured Sandler and Jennifer Aniston in the New York working class and whose holidays in Europe are handcuffed to a 70-billion-dollar corpse, would have to earn a respectable salary at the box office. (The 2011 duo's "Just Go With It" clash brought in $ 215 million worldwide.) Today, movie stars are wandering on Netflix in a film that looks like a postcard. a bygone era. It turns out that the small screen frames their capers movie well.

The multiplex may be in jeopardy, but at least it is better than the mogul Malcolm Quince (an imperious Terence Stamp) who is dragging himself in the ballroom of his yacht to announce that he is disinheriting all his guests and that he is immediately stabbed to death. The suspects could all have entered a game of Clue. There is the actress (Gemma Arterton), the colonel (John Kani), the driver of the race car (Luis Gerardo Méndez), the Maharajah (Adeel Akhtar), as well as the family tree of the deceased , which includes an unloved son (David Walliams), a viscount raconteur (Luke Evans), and the fiancée (23 years old) of Malcolm's ski instructor (Shioli Kutsuna), who wears his status as a gold digger as brazenly as her tight dresses.

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However, the local French inspector (Dany Boon, star of the French comedy – and a sort of Gallic Adam Sandler) assigns the assassination to Nick and Audrey Spitz of Sandler and Aniston, a cop and a hairdresser during their first vacation abroad, for no reason to start the plot in a hurry. "Are you saying that your theory is that the two of us went up at the last minute on the boat of a stranger to commit a premeditated murder that does not benefit us in any way?", Asks Audrey, a novel obsessive policeman. Yesthe gendarme implies exactly that. The most audacious thing in James Vanderbilt's scenario is perhaps to suggest that the French police are as impulsive as the Italians who sentenced Amanda Knox. Once the Spitz are I accuse'd, the following is strictly in accordance with the book: a manhunt, more murders and a climatic collision with Ferrari on AC / DC. A better comedy would be an action comedy that could simply bypass the rigged car chase.

The brilliant and simple film director Kyle Newacheck is betting on the power of its stars. Meanwhile, his group is struggling to find out who may seem the most guilty. The old Bond Girl Arterton is a ravenous vampire who raises bodices, while Evans with a mustache refines his egoistic Euro-villain since the "Fast and the Furious" franchise. Evans loves to play tricked crooks every time he appears on the screen, smelling smelling cologne and vermouth Smell-O-Vision.

Of course, every Adam Sandler comedy respects a trope as big as "the master builder did." At some point in the shenanigans, Sandler no longer has the chance to prove he's the boy the bravest of the world. Sandler's career being frozen, so are his characters. Nick Spitz buys Audrey a $ 50 gift card for his 10-year birthday and wears cargo shorts at a dinner party with a black tie. Their wedding needs a jolt of excitement, something more appealing than the sad and hectic condescending that runs under a Sandler role.

However, what is most insignificant in this relationship on the screen is that Aniston gives a real performance. His wife, bored, is idealistic, naive and clumsy, the kind of midshipman who dresses for a transatlantic flight but fears to pay $ 9 for ear plugs. She is thrilled to drink spritz with a Viscount and the audience fainted for her, even though her first encounter with Evans is the climax of the film's erotic thrill. "Murder Mystery" feels as impassive as paste jewelry – a gem for nights that yearn for nothing more exotic than a pizza – but Aniston sparkles as if nothing had happened.