Benoit Blanc's second outing is an enjoyable film, but still felt like a step down when compared to the original. It tries to do all of the same things, but none of them are quite as successful. The ensemble isn't as compelling, the humor doesn't land quite as often, and, most critically, the central mystery isn't nearly as clever and satisfying. All of that said, I consider the original film to be an instant classic, so the bar was quite high, and even falling short of that bar, this film has plenty of worthwhile elements. The set-up is fantastic, and I was totally on board with everything up through the hilarious scene where [spoiler]Benoit instantly solves Miles' murder mystery game and wins an iPad[/spoiler]. Additionally, even though the humor wasn't quite as consistent, there were still some inspired moments, one of the standouts being when [spoiler]Benoit dabs his eyes with Jeremy Renner's hot sauce[/spoiler]. The film also got plenty of mileage out of extravagant billionaire related humor (e.g. [spoiler]the live stream of Serena Williams in the personal gym[/spoiler]). There were also plenty of cameos, some of which were used to solid effect, while others felt strangely superfluous ([spoiler]what was the point of Hugh Grant? Was he playing himself, like the various celebrities Benoit was facetiming with in his tub, or was he a character?[/spoiler]).

As for my critiques of the central mystery, the plotting just felt a little forced. For example, Benoit's final monologue in which he identifies the culprit hinges on the idea that [spoiler]Miles had been completely ruled out as a suspect on account of his reputation as a genius. However, the decision to rule him out was force fed to the audience and glossed over so quickly that it never really felt right to begin with. As such, this monologue that is positioned as a big reveal, doesn't feel like much of a reveal at all[/spoiler]. Also, the bombastic finale dragged on too long and lead to an overly predictable payoff ([spoiler]the glass breaking into fire starting into Mona Lisa burning took forever, and with how often the Mona Lisa security was mentioned/shown, it was obvious what was going to happen[/spoiler]). I couldn't help but feel like the movie was missing one extra twist or turn that could have kept things a bit more fresh. In fact, the writing had a set up for one that would have worked with very minimal changes: [spoiler]Whiskey should have been the one to shoot Andi. She thought that Andi killed Duke and had an extended moment near Duke's body where she could have grabbed his gun. This would have made the final cat and mouse more interesting, as Miles would have been able to honestly deny one of the crimes, thus casting doubt on his overall guilt[/spoiler]. That's just me spitballing, but I think it would have made for a more interesting third act.