WMS

Murder Mystery

2019 · Directed by Kyle Newacheck

🧘4

Woke Score

38

Critic

🍿55

Audience

Ultra Based

Critics rated this 34 points above its woke score. Among Ultra Based films, this critic score ranks #1370 of 1469.

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Synopsis

On a long-awaited trip to Europe, a New York City cop and his hairdresser wife scramble to solve a baffling murder aboard a billionaire's yacht.

Consciousness Assessment

Murder Mystery is a Netflix comedy that exists in a state of determined narrative innocence. It concerns itself entirely with the mechanics of a murder-on-a-yacht plot, treating its international cast as functional components in a machine designed to generate mild chuckles rather than as vehicles for cultural commentary. The film's diversity of casting, while present, serves no purpose beyond populating the story. There is no interrogation of power, no examination of identity, and no suggestion that the filmmakers believe themselves to be saying anything whatsoever about the world beyond what happens when an American couple boards a boat and discovers a body. This is not a criticism of the film's artistic merit, merely an observation of its complete disinterest in the constellation of progressive sensibilities that have come to define contemporary cinema. The hairdresser wife character, played by Jennifer Aniston, exists as a comedic figure without any self-aware commentary on gender, labor, or social position. The various international characters are simply characters in a plot, not representatives of anything larger. Murder Mystery commits no offense because it commits to nothing. It is a film that would have played identically in 1995 or 2025, a temporal orphan indifferent to the cultural moment in which it was released.

Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm

Critic Reviews

38%from 19 reviews
Entertainment Weekly75

Aniston and Sandler, paired before in 2011’s "Just Go With It," relax into their roles as if their only stake in Mystery is to enjoy the free trip to Italy and have fun running down cobblestones.

Leah GreenblattRead Full Review →
IGN67

Sandler and Aniston's chemistry elevates a breezy, bumpy overseas caper.

Matt FowlerRead Full Review →
The Guardian60

A surprisingly nimble summer comedy that finds both Aniston and Sandler at their most charming.

Benjamin LeeRead Full Review →
Consequence25

Murder Mystery is a dud, stained with slack humor and a total unwillingness to play within its own chosen genre.

Blake GobleRead Full Review →