I am at a loss to understand the affection certain critics and large swaths of the population seem to have for Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion, now streaming on Netflix after a brief theatrical run.

The second film in the Knives Out franchise leaves me just as cold as the first one, which was released in 2019. After the unexpected, phenomenal success of that film, Netflix offered producer/director Johnson a ton of money to produce two more Knives Out films for the streaming network. Glass Onion aka Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is the first of them.

The title, Glass Onion, comes from the song of that name from The Beatles’ White Album. Although the film is classified as both a mystery and a comedy, the emphasis is on comedy, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. Many films have classified as both comedy and mystery from the oft filmed The Cat and the Canary to The Thin Man series and beyond. The most successful comedy-mysteries succeed at both. Although the first two Knives Out mysteries are convoluted, I easily figured out who the murderer was in both films. How and why may have been more difficult, but who did it wasn’t, at least for me, and that makes it a fail as a mystery. Comedy, on the other hand, is a matter of taste.

I like all kinds of comedies from raucous to sophisticated, but I don’t like anything that insults my intelligence. These did, Glass Onion even more than its predecessor.

The Glass Onion characters who are invited to a palatial estate on an isolated Greek island during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 are all derivative of characters we’ve seen before. All are broadly played from obnoxious host Edward Norton to seemingly dimwitted detective Daniel Craig, reprising his role from Knives Out, to Kate Hudson in full silly ass mode as an aging actress still holding court in the limelight. The one realistic character is the detective’s assistant played by Janelle Monáe who gets to solve the mystery in lieu of her boss.

That Janelle Monáe is the only actor who emerges from the film as a strong Oscar contender is gratifying, but as good as she is in the context of the film, hers is not really an award-worthy performance. Those who single out Daniel Craig and his ridiculous accent or Kate Hudson and her over-the-top silliness baffle me.

One selling point designed to draw in unsuspecting older viewers was the slyly dropped information that the film contained cameos by numerous well-known personalities including Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury, both of whom would be seen on screen for the last time. They are, however, seen very briefly on screen in a zoom conference. Blink and you’ll miss them.

Genuine mystery buffs would get more out of Sondheim and Anthony Perkins’ 1973 whodunit The Last of Sheila or Lansbury’s iconic Jessica Fletcher in twelve seasons of Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996). Also of interest would of course be one of the many films or TV productions made from the numerous works of Agatha Christie, of which Green Onion is a pale imitation.

Memorable Christie works include René Clair’s 1945 version of And Then There Were None with Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald, Roland Young, and Judith Anderson; Billy Wilder’s 1957 version of Witness for the Prosecution with Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, and Elsa Lanchester; Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express with Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, and Wendy Hiller; and John Guillermin’s 1978 version of Death on the Nile with Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, and Angela Lansbury for starters.

Also highly recommended are the various interpretations of Christie’s Miss Marple from Margaret Rutherford in the 1960s, Helen Hayes in the early 1980s, Joan Hickson in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Geraldine MacEwan and Julia McKenzie in the early 2000s as well as David Suchet’s definitive interpretation of Christie’s Poirot from 1989-2013.

As an alternative for holiday streaming, I recommend Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio on Netflix or The Banshees of Inisherin on HBO Max, both of which I reviewed last week, or 1923 on Paramount.

1923 is a prequel to the highly successful Yellowstone now in its fifth season on CBS, with earlier seasons streaming on Peacock.

1923 reunites Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren for the first time since 1986’s The Mosquito Coast again playing husband and wife, playing the grandparents of Kevin Costner’s character in Yellowstone.

No matter what your favorite classic Christmas movie is, be it 1938’s A Christmas Carol, 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner or Remember the Night, 1945’s Christmas in Connecticut, 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life, 1947’s The Bishop’s Wife, 1951’s A Christmas Carol, 1957’s All Mine to Give, or something else, a great holiday movie viewing season begins with 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street on or around Thanksgiving and ends with 1960’s The Apartment on New Year’s Eve.