On their fifteenth wedding anniversary Nick Spitz (Adam Sandler) and Audrey Spitz (Jennifer Aniston) are finally going on their dream honeymoon of travelling to Europe. Unfortunately a truly bizarre set of circumstances will have them attempting to solve the murder of billionaire Malcolm Quince (Terence Stamp).

Murder Mystery has been available on Netflix for just over a year now and I finally got round to viewing it thanks to one of those evenings where you are too tired to want to engage your brain at anything above surface level. The plot of Murder Mystery is still patently ridiculous even at that level of engagement but you only really have two options. Go with it and assume this is what they were purposely going for or shoot it down with barbs every few seconds for how stupid it is.

Nick is a New York policeman who keeps failing the detective exam and apparently just scraped into the force despite his appalling marksmanship. Audrey is a hairdresser who loves trashy murder mystery novels. The whole setup of the film seems to be to emulate the books that Audrey reads and for two terrible detectives to solve a murder. Whilst on their flight to Europe they meet Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans), a man whose uncle stole his fiancé and in an effort to spite him he chooses to invite the Spitz’s along to his yacht. On board we meet an even more bizarre group of people. The afore mentioned billionaire has invited a movie star (Gemma Arterton), an F1 driver who does not speak English (Luis Gerardo Mendez), his son (David Walliams), the Maharajeh (Adele Akhtar), a one armed colonel (John Kani), his bodyguard (Olafur Darri Olafsson) and the fiancée he stole (Shiloh Kutsuna). When the billionaire tells them all that he is cutting them from his will he is murdered and the ‘fun’ begins.

Assuming the many crazy happenings are on purpose I found it odd that the one that nearly threw me out of the whole film was the sheer insanity of an F1 driver who did not speak English was nearly my tipping point. And the deeply cynical might think the cast just fancied visiting Monte Carlo and Lake Como which provide the beautiful backdrops to the film.

The most interesting factor is that truly eclectic cast I mentioned above overacting every scene. Given a very low bar the film is passably entertaining and has a few laughs. There are many other films that do the murder mystery story better, not least of which is Knives Out which is also available to stream via Amazon. But then again, this being good does not seem to be the point.