Lana's (Jessicah Neufeld) a former soap actress currently out of a job, Nick (Jason Bernardo) a screenwriter between assignments, so they have already ammassed a bit of debts over the months and a violent but somewhat dim debt collector (Christopher Botiller) is already after them. So Nick comes up with a desparate idea, that they live-stream their cocktail hours, talking about everything and nothing, and while Lana is initially against it, she soon agrees thinking of the money they can make. To their disappointment, they have mered a mere handful Dollars after a few days of being on cam ... and then a murder happens in the apartment next to them, and the fatal bullet smashes through the wall into their apartment - but apparently hid so well that the detective on the job (Thurman Dalrymple) can't find it. Only when they themselves go on a search, they got it in under 5 minutes - which gives them an idea, to investigate the murder themselves. Sure, they don't understand the first thing about it, but after they were so much better in finding the bullet than the detective, how hard can it be? So their idea is, since the killer probably lives on their floor, to unit per unit invite the neighbours (Patrick Wolff, Caroline Amiguet, Lucy Boryer, Mike Sears, Ricardo Molina, Jasmine M. Garcia, Brian Lally, Nerissa Tedesco, Alex Kip) over for cocktails, to get them drunk, maybe also stoned, and make the guilty person spill the beans - live on webcam of course. Problem is, they don't know their neighbours and are more often than not overpowered by their temperaments, and at the end of their experiment they come out with nothing at all. So they have one desperate final idea - a big cocktail party for everyone, including a murder reveal that they totally have to wing ...

Murder and Cocktails is a murder mystery that's not at all to be taken seriously, it's pretty much a whodunnit comedy very much in the vein of similar films of old (think The Thin Man et al. here), only that it takes the absurdity of the amateur sleuth concept even one step further while being firmly rooted in the here and now in terms of direction and plot elements. But what makes the movie work is on one hand it's humourous approach that always stays this side of the moronic, on the other its clear love and understanding of the murder mystery genre, even if not all genre mainstays are taken wholly seriously (including a rabbitt-out-of-the-hat solution to the mystery). But all of this, coupled with a very decent ensemble cast, make this a great watch, not only for whodunnit fans.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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