Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is a vacation mystery, a somewhat sequel to 2019's Knives Out, carrying over the detective Benoit Blanc(Daniel Craig) but nothing else. A group of friends who have a vague involvement in lead friend Miles'(Edward Norton) tech/media company get together for their yearly vacation/adventure hosted by Miles. Andi(Janelle Monáe), one of the group, recently completed a failed suit against the company and was estranged from the group but attends anyway. Blanc is mysteriously/erroneously invited.
The star-studded cast all have wonderful outfits and clearly are having a great time on their Grecian island shoot but all are thin, grating characterizations(if not outright caricature), even Craig so wonderful in the first film here is predictable, boring, and less sophisticated than his previous iteration. There is attempt at class commentary which is way off base and particularly ironic coming from a cast and a filmmaker who are themselves rich, part of the strata in which they attempt(and miserably fail) to send up. There is a cavalcade of cameos which are cool I guess, but serve ultimately no purpose and function only to overstuff an already bloated runtime.
Visually a bit glaringly glitzy, full of pastels and over-saturated coloring, the costuming absolutely incredible, the soundtrack/score mostly forgettable. The production, overall, inconsistent. The script is baffling. The turns and reveals in the mystery are telegraphed, predictable and frequently illogical. Even if the mystery element of it were engaging the characters are so two dimensional, so unlikable, there is ultimately no stakes, we don't actually care about anyone, they could all be killed with no emotional effect.
One of the reasons the first film was successful was because Ana De Armas was the center, a good person caught in an impossible situation, and Craig was a supporting character and as such allowed to go big. Here Craig functions kind of as the main with Monáe somewhat sharing the spotlight as the movie progresses and as such the chemistry doesn't work. Not to mention Monáe is simply out of her depth, in recent years she has failed to make good on the promise she showed in Hidden Figures and this is no exception.
Plodding, uninspired, self-satisfied.
Currently streaming on Netflix.
Don't See It.
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