Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) would be exponentially better if the filmmakers had focused more on the mystery and devoted less attention to distracting efforts to seem woke and politically correct.

The biggest problem is Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe), who is miscast in a poorly conceived dual role as twin sisters, but often seems to function primarily as a conduit for irrelevant and distracting woke content. One of the sisters is a brilliant visionary, while the other seems comparably brilliant, but squanders her talents teaching fourth grade rather than a graduate course in computer science at MIT or Cal Tech, much like Daniel Craig seems to be squandering his talents by spurning the role of James Bond to play a derivative Hercule Poirot, a role he can play in his sleep and sometimes seems to.

Beyond this, elementary school teachers have lost much of the stature once ascribed to their role in society. Students are graduating high school without basic skills and have fallen even further behind because teachers' unions opposed in-person learning during the pandemic. Many teachers seem primarily concerned with indoctrinating students with Marxist political views, racist critical race theory, and dubious notions of gender fluidity, while labeling parents as domestic terrorists and posting TikTok videos that raise serious doubts as to whether they should be allowed anywhere near children.

Brand maintains a supposedly detailed journal, which of course contains critical clues. But rather than using her phone and cloud storage to update an indexed and cross-referenced multimedia journal like any self-respecting computer geek, she records it in a small diary with the first thirty-odd years of her life somehow condensed into about a hundred pages. She receives an intricate puzzle box, which in a fit of rage she smashes apart with a claw hammer without any effort at solving the puzzles. For much of the movie, she upstages Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc, which is annoying, as the audience didn't come to watch the sidekick steal the show. If being a slacker with anger issues in a profession that has fallen into disrepute isn't sufficient reason to dislike the character, the chaotic climatic scene entails her committing an unspeakably heinous act that can only be applauded by radical eco-terrorists.

Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc has two scenes in which he displays his brilliant powers of deduction and eidetic recall of obscure clues; however, the reveals seem less satisfying because the audience isn't allowed to see him gathering some of the clues. Much of his screen time is instead devoted to displaying his character's idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. Near the end, he inexplicably breaks character to incite a series of heinous acts.

Dave Bautista has an amusing role at the beginning, playing a muscular millennial living in his domineering mother's basement, but is largely relegated in later scenes as a caricature of a gun nut. Other characters also seem to be shallow caricatures of celebrities.

The movie offers a satisfyingly complex plot, with red herrings, and credible suspects. The production values are top-notch. The stellar cast is led by Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, and Dave Bautista; however, the filmmakers leave their top talent on the bench for much of the duration, instead leaving much of the heavy lifting to a minor character in the role of sidekick who isn't likely to reprise her role in the next Knives Out film.