It’s long been a truth acknowledged that Adam Sandler doesn’t make movies anymore, he gets movie studios to foot the bill for his vacations. The last few years, Netflix has been paying for Sandler and his pals to go on vacation, the output of which has been execrable, yet Adam Sandler movie vacations are, supposedly, popular for Netflix (“supposedly” because we don’t actually have transparency from Netflix on viewership data, we just have to take their word for it). The latest Adam Sandler movie vacation involves yachting on the Mediterranean with Jennifer Aniston. The movie looks completely mediocre, but the vacation looks super fun.

It’s called Murder Mystery, because no one is really trying, and it is about Adam Sandler with a questionable mustache and Jennifer Aniston playing a married couple taking a long-delayed honeymoon. On the plane, they meet a rich guy (Luke Evans), who invites these total randos onto his super yacht. I want to know what this looked like in the script. I imagine it was just “Mediterranean” and then a photo of the yacht Sandler wanted to rent. There is inevitably a murder, and then Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston have to solve the murder by visiting seaside towns and sight-seeing. 

I’m not going to pretend this is a real movie, because it isn’t. If you’ve seen anything Sandler has done over the last decade, you know it isn’t. Sandler does the bare minimum of making a movie while hanging out in vacation spots, and this looks no different. Which is a shame, because the set up isn’t bad. That bit with Aniston saying, “Just leave my books alone,” rings true with anyone who likes to read “trash” and gets picked on. Every once in a while an Adam Sandler movie stumbles into something decent, which just makes the transparently minimal effort put into these movies so aggravating. But they are always helpful when looking for ideas for your next vacation.  


Attached - Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler filming reshoots for Murder Mystery last month.