Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is less knowing, less smart, and all-round less interesting than its predecessor

Rian Johnson’s movie was such a smash hit that Netflix quickly whistled up more. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, to all intents and purposes, is a sequel which aims for bigger. Mr Blanc is back. The gang this time around is much flashier, and the location much fancier. Miles Bron (Norton) a tech billionaire who uses his sun-dappled private Greek island as bait to entice his his old pals– a washed-out supermodel (Hudson), a politician on the fast track (Hahn), a men’s rights activist with a thing for tattoos (Bautista), a scientist on the verge of a breakthrough (Odom Jr) and their companions — for a weekend of twisty fun and games.

Watch the trailer of Glass Onion here:

But, wait, what is Blanc doing in this gathering? As we mull, Bron is busily revealing himself as a proper little bruiser, who has something on all his friends, and doesn’t hesitate to press the screws. What Bron wants, Bron gets. Anyone thinking of a real-life tech billionaire with similar characteristics? This one has a supersonic car which he keeps stashed on the top of a dome (the glass onion of the title), because, he tells Blanc, there’s nowhere to drive it on the island. Well, ha ha.

The unexpected presence of Andi (Monae), Bron’s erstwhile, embittered partner, turns the latter even more unctuous. Clearly, no one loves Bron, and everyone looks daggers at him when he is not looking. At a dinner laid out in a room which wouldn’t have been out of place in a museum, there’s no eating involved, because truth bombs are enemies of gustation. And then someone in the gussied-up gathering falls dead. At this point, Johnson cleverly flips a switch, letting us in on a secret, and just like that, we are primed for a flashpoint. It comes, and things go crash, bang, crash. And then, of course, there’s the big reveal.

So. Is it as much fun as the first? Having given you this long-ish build up, you’d think I was totally into it, like I was in the first. But no: despite its good looks, Knives Out is less knowing, less smart, and all-round less interesting. Even though Hudson is terrific as the bird-brained model, appropriately called Birdy Jay, she is not someone you want to spend any time with. The rest of the ‘disruptors’ are even less inviting: this is a movie trying very hard to skewer the rich and the famous, but Ruben Ostlund got there first. Imagine getting in a delicious line like this: ‘everyone is so woke these days, it is out of control’, and not being able to build on it.

Norton, who makes up such nonsensical words as ‘inbreathiate’ and ‘predefinite’, is very good as the guy who preys upon others, fattening himself to the point of bursting. Monae is excellent, as the girl who is taken advantage of, and who then tries to right things by doing the right thing. And Craig is as dapper as ever, his drawl even more stretched, but is made to lurk at the edges, waiting for his moment: he needed to have more to do. Blanc is bland, and despite all its bells and whistles, so is the movie.