Quiet comedy and zesty action blend neatly

As “Murder Mystery 2” unfolds, Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler (shown here) become action heroes.
She’s dangling from the Eiffel Tower, he’s fighting a muscular villain, both are battling bad guys inside a speeding van.
But the strength of this film – which debuted Friday (March 31) on Netflix – involves their quieter bits.
They play a husband and wife who can’t help questioning and correcting each other – even when there are bigger things to focus on. That provides the fun, as we wait for the next big moment.
Sandler plays an ex-cop and Aniston is an ex-waitress. In the original film (also available on Netflix), they solved a murder; this one starts with a fast and funny montage of the failures that followed.
Clearly, they need a break. That’s when a rich guy invites them to a wedding on his island. They can relax for a few minutes – until they’re propelled into their Paris adventure, alongside a guy (Mark Strong) who wrote the book on detective work – quite literally.
There are occasional excesses (did we mention this is an Adam Sandler film?), but there’s also solid acting and great likability; it is, after all, a Jennifer Aniston film. And that van fight scene is an ideal piece of comedy/action/mayhem.
This mystery begins on an exotic island, just as Netflix’s “Knives Out: Glass Onion” did. James Vanderbilt’s script can’t match the brilliance of Rian Johnson’s two “Knives Out” scripts, each an Oscar-nominee. But it keeps us watching and laughing, just like movies used to do in theaters.