Take a dark and stately mansion, a dead wealthy patriarch, some fine actors, greedy and vicious children,  potential murderers with excellent motives; throw in some befuddled cops,  a famous private detective and a loving and gullible caretaker, add the perfect director with great style and a wicked sense of humor, add a lot of wit and a wonderful script and you’ve got the perfect Agatha Christie-style mystery movie.

That’s “Knives Out” by Director Rian Johnson.

The formula is all Christie, but Johnson took it and ran with it. Daniel Craig (James Bond) is the legendary private detective (with a Southern Accent, he sometimes sounded like Forrest Gump.)

This movie is very funny – witty is a better term, yet it also held me in its grip, it was suspenseful enough to keep me very engaged, but never brutal or violent enough to disturb or repel me.

It’s not a mystery about the end of life as we know, just a classic British style murder story. Try to solve it if you can. I couldn’t.

You will probably never come close to guessing who did it, which is fine with me, I could just relax and enjoy this very entertaining, modern take  on Christie (there’s even a far-right wingnut troll teenager the family lovingly calls “Nazi-boy.”)

The movie manages to be delightfully contemporary without veering far from the much loved Christie formula. All kinds of suspects, a revelation at the very end.

A movie with great actors, a wonderful script, a keen sense of human and one clever twist and challenge after another.

You will certainly not find a spoiler in this review.

Everybody involved seemed to take great pleasure in the making of it, including Chris Evans Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Lakeith Stanfield, and Toni Collette.

Simply enough, the plot is about a detective (Benoit  Blanc a/k/ Crag) paid by a mystery client to investigate the death of the mansion’s imperious patriarch Harlan Thrombey, himself a fabulously successful mystery author (Christopher Plummer) who is found dead in a flamboyant and suspicious way.

Everybody but Benoit thinks it’s a suicide.

Thrombey is at odds with almost everyone in his nasty, manipulative and dependent family and plans to teach them all lessons about life.

Caretaker Nurse Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) and Benoit are at the center of the mystery.

I don’t need to go on. This movie is a great holiday gift for the dwindling numbers of American moviegoers who just want to go to the movies to have fun (rather than see half of the world blown up, we can get that on the news), eat some popcorn, and leave smiling, like a ride on a beautiful carousel.

It’s great fun – like a terrific puzzle – to go going over the clues, which are deftly sprinkled like grass seeds all over the movie.

No need for me to go on. It’s a delightful movie, almost perfectly done. Go see it if you can.