Murder Mystery 2 (2022)

Not as sophisticated a mystery as the plot of a Murder, She Wrote episode, this sequel to Netflix's 2019 Murder Mystery at least improves on that original, generating a few laughs and keeping the pace brisk and the length blessedly short as Nick and Audrey Spitz end up on a tropical island for a wedding where a murderer strikes.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Murder Mystery (2019)

Adam Sandler not acting like a moron and Jennifer Aniston doing what she always does makes for a likeable pair of sleuths here but the writing is so lazy, the murder mystery plot aboard a luxury boat so run-of-the-mill, the assembled suspects (played by a surprising array of big name stars) so lacking in characterisation beyond exaggerated nationality, deformity, or idiosyncracy, and the denouement so underwhelming, so bemusing - in fact so boring - viewers will only continue watching to the end either because they're tied to their chair or because they vainly hope this Netflix offering will dish up a final twist or surprise or something, anything!, to unlock the great mystery: how Netflix sustains its subscription service when it serves up dross like this so lazily thrown together you almost suspect it has been released unfinished.

★☆☆☆☆

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Horrible Bosses (2011)

Three employees plot to do away with their horrible bosses, a plan that sees them, respectable men leading regular suburban lives, venturing clumsily into an underworld of crime, which is the premise of this shrieky, snide, sneery and unpleasant comedy of minimal laughs featuring Hollywood's most smug performers.

★☆☆☆☆

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Office Christmas Party (2016)

After a really strong set-up and first half, this comedy about the Zenotech corporation's efforts to throw a Christmas party descends, like the party itself, into chaos, abandoning narrative sense, moving the action away from the titular party, and ending on the idea that financial, medical, emotional and organisational woes are best dealt with with a sex and drug orgy, as if the writers themselves lost interest in the film's second half when one of them gave the signal for the others to join him outside for another toke/smoke/chuff/shot/snort/job.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Office Space (1999)

Thanks to a hypnosis accident, disengaged and disgruntled office worker, Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) starts impressing upper management in this comedy that perfectly articulates the plight of many modern-day cubicle dwellers lost in soulless corporations and particularly those employees working under insipid middle managers like the one here portrayed in a perfectly irritating manner by a hilarious Gary Cole.

★★★★☆

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