Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, and Dany Boon in ‘Murder Mystery’ on Netflix Image by Courtesy of Netflix

Jews have a proud history in entertainment — Sarah Bernhardt, Molly Picon, Mel Brooks, Barbra Streisand — what a source of gladness and pride for our community! We could watch, read, and listen for 100 years, and still not have canvassed the extraordinary ever-growing legacy of Jews entertaining America.

And yet we still found time to watch “Murder Mystery,” the glossy Netflix-made vacation romp that stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. Life is short and then you die, and if you spent 97 minutes watching an aging Adam Sandler try to solve a murder mystery on a boat, that’s okay — it was fun, honestly!

?ADAM SANDLER AND JENNIFER ANISTON BREAKING NEWS ALERT?

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

30,869,863 accounts watched Murder Mystery in its first 3 days – the biggest opening weekend ever for a Netflix Film. 13,374,914 accounts in the US and Canada, and 17,494,949 more worldwide.

— Netflix Is A Joke (@NetflixIsAJoke) June 18, 2019

Netflix claims that over 31 million people watched the summery movie made by Sandler’s production company, which contains as many paid endorsements for Claritin as it does dead bodies (we lost count of both.) The murder mystery here is about as interesting as playing the board game Clue with a group of clumsy children. But the easy banter between married couple Claire and Nick, played by Aniston and Sandler, is — and it wilts every fiber in our liberal arts diplomas to say this — oddly charming.

Adam Sandler is polarizing. Sure, most of us like it when he begs celebrities to perform at his daughter’s bat mitzvah party, but Sandler has developed from weirdo-we-let-hang-around-the-frat-house to depressing-neighbor-we-invite-places-out-of-pity. And Aniston’s thing these days seems to mostly involve drinking bottled water while beautiful. Together and in fiction, though, they are a strange and overwhelming advertisement for the endless trudge of marriage and monogamy. They just make it seem…delightful.

Netflix is famously secretive with numbers, selectively releasing unverified streaming statistics whenever it serves them. Claiming that nearly 31 million people saw “Murder Mystery” in the first three days of its release, pointed out film historian Peter Labuza, would make the frothy action movie the third biggest opening weekend of the year, and give it a higher watch rate than the “Game of Thrones” finale by more than 10 million.

Is Netflix counting people who pressed play, saw that Jennifer Aniston was going to have to do the same stunts as Sandler but in heeled espadrilles, and instantly clicked it off? Perhaps! All we can report is that “Murder Mystery” is a fun watch if you’re the kind of person who is sometimes too tired to press “skip ad” in the lead-up to a YouTube video.

And sometimes that’s nice, in addition to the Streisands and Seinfelds.

via GIPHY

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount