The Oxford Murders (2008)

There is much to laugh at in “The Oxford Murders,” a serial murder thriller mixing in philosophy, math, and Frodo (Elijah Wood) as a hunk of smooth manliness wooing the English ladies with spaghetti and meatball themed sex. Not intended as a comedy, this flick is hilarious. Wood stars an American student who puts all his life into entering Oxford U to study under John Hunt’s wild-haired fruit loop professor’s logic class only to learn after his arrival on campus that the professor has retired from teaching. The kid is stunned. Really? Adults wrote and directed. The adults are Jorge Guerricaechevarria and Álex de la Iglesia (real names?) and they dish up all the genre thriller clichés sprinkled with inane philosophical babble and algorithm riddles that only nerds must think clever, with Wood – I must mention this again – as the stud wooing woman thrillingly open to pasta experimentation. Might all this be satire? Dig Jim Carter’s inspector who slowly catches on that serial murderers kill multiple victims. Dud. D+