Taking into account the ever-waning ability of audiences to digest the rom-com, Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler have reteamed after 2011’s Just Go With It to put the required veneer on it to sell genre: murder mystery. Hence, the title being straightforwardly that. With the tag line, “First class problems, second class detectives,” we’re taken into the middlebrow world of Nick (Sandler) and Audrey (Aniston) Spitz. The former has just failed his detective test for the third time, unable to bring himself to tell Audrey that he’s still just a garden variety police officer. The only person who knows about his dirty secret is his co-worker and friend, Jimmy Stern (Erik Griffin). And Nick intends to keep it that way until Audrey pushes him into the scenario of a European vacation, with many unknown truths leaking out over the course of the journey.
Directed by Workaholics co-creator Kyle Newacheck, the script, written by James Vanderbilt (yes, a member of that Vanderbilt family), materialized back in 2012, with Charlize Theron originally slated to star (in the end, she would settle for an executive producer credit). That it took seven years to come to fruition is perhaps a fortuitous outcome, as the movie industry is starved for rom-coms, even in the guise of a whodunit? narrative. Naturally, Audrey is obsessed with reading murder mystery novels (in tangible form no less–in fact, the entire movie feels outside of any time period), therefore fancying herself something of an expert on the subject. Hence, upon encountering Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans)–a viscount–in the first class section of her plane as she tries to pilfer some earplugs to drown out Nick’s snoring, she immediately pegs him as the type of person who would be the bad guy, and says as much to his face. Seemingly charmed by her, he strikes up a conversation and invites her to join him on his yacht bound for Monaco once they touchdown, even if she is married. For just as the only reason they get an invite is because of Audrey, so, too, is she the only reason that they’re in Europe at all. For she finally puts her foot down about wanting the European honeymoon she was promised fifteen years ago. Even if it comes at a terrible time for Nick, who is struggling financially without the detective raise Audrey thinks he’s gotten.
In many ways, Aniston is reprising her role as Brooke Meyers in 2006’s The Break-Up, for she similarly wishes that her significant other would just show slightly more viable signs (of a material bent, to be sure–for this is an American-made movie) of giving a shit. That, and in both cases, she was well out of both men’s physical league. To that point, many jokes about Nick having more than one chin are made. But facial foibles or not, he’s her only ally when their deluxe boat ride turns into a murder mystery nightmare that quickly (and inexplicably) leaves them as the prime suspects.
As the body count escalates, Nick and Audrey have no one to turn to for help–least of all the smoke ring-blowing inspector on the case, de la Croix (Danny Boon)–except themselves. With Nick’s alleged know-how in the profession and Audrey’s reading appetite, they rehash the only reasons anyone murder–money, love or revenge. Yet that still doesn’t rule enough people out. For everyone had their own agenda when it came to billionaire Malcolm Quince (Terence Stamp), the murder that spurred this entire chain (in a moment that directly pays homage to Murder on the Orient Express, which itself just had a recent so-so revamp). And the deeper that Audrey and Nick dig, the more they realize that while middle class life might be a financial struggle most of the time, people in that realm tend to do far less fucked up shit than the rich, whose money seems to buy them the privilege of enough time to plan elaborate murders. And of course get away with them.
But the rich have met their match in the plebeian stylings of Audrey and Nick, who combine the elements of Ocean’s Twelve slickness (and the according European backdrops–incidentally, George Clooney threw a pizza party for Aniston and Sandler while they were filming in Lake Como) with the comedic glamor of The Tourist. There’s even hints of the still underrated Woody Allen comedy, 1993’s Manhattan Murder Mystery (though it’s unlikely it will ever get its due now) throughout, as Audrey becomes fascinated with solving the case and unmasking the true identity of the culprit à la Diane Keaton.
And maybe the most consistent thing of all about the Americans in Europe plotline is that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Because Americans just aren’t equipped. Unless, one supposes, they’re from New York (as Nick and Audrey are).
