Murder Mystery 2 Review: Gets Bollywood’s Maharaja Culture Hideously Wrong

Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler are two of the most charismatic Hollywood superstars. When in 2018 they got together for the silly goofy and nominally fatuously fun Murder Mystery, we congratulated them for getting their paychecks with the right zeroes. By the way the director’s name of that monstrosity was Kyle Newacheck.

This time with Jeremy Garelick (even the director’s name sounds cheesy) at the helm, Murder Mystery 2 is outright asinine. The dimwitted plot (James Vanderbilt) has room for so much brainless bacchanalia, it begins to feel like a village-square drinking competition. The plot has two major locational shifts only: one at an island where Nick and Audrey Spitz arrive at the invitation of a Maharaja , pronounced 'Maha-roger'. The other is Paris.

There are 'Spit' jokes which Sandler and Aniston seem to enjoy. We don’t.

Now you may have presumed that the Indian Maharaja in a turban riding an elephant went out of vogue with Peter Sellers’ The Party decades ago. Surprise surprise! Adeel Akhtar plays a Maharaja with a turban and the most terrible ‘Indian’ accent since Sellers.

This, I guess, is Adeel’s lucky moment, as he gets to ride an elephant into a wedding celebration as his wife-to-be Claudette (Melanie Laurent) and sister Saira (Kuhoo Verma) cheer and dance. I hope Adeel enjoyed being a Maharaja. We didn’t.

The dance of the dunce with awful shrieking Punjabi songs playing in the background prompts me to remind Hollywood that there is more to ‘Bollywood’ than Punjabi songs. But who is going to tell these atrophied revelers that stereotyping races and cultures is no longer considered cool?

But we needn’t feel too offended. Murder Mystery 2 is too shallow and lobotomized to be taken seriously on any level. It tries to make stupidity a fashion statement , and fails.

Once the 'Maha-roger' is kidnapped, the storytelling gets even more cramped and self-limited.The long action sequence in Paris reminded me of John Wick 4 without the thrill of the chase. The screeching of hot wheels is drowned in the wailing of the characters who are either hysterical with hedonism or zonked out by the sheer foolishness of the comedy crime caper with a paper thin plot and actors who, like us,just want to get over this torpid trash.

Before I try to erase the experience from my memory , here is a sample of the humour. A snooty Countess (Jodie Turner-Smith) sees Audrey heaping the food on her plate at the wedding.

"You don’t get food where you come from?" the rude countess asks.

 Will someone please tell these people to just shut the flock up?