DEATH AT A FUNERAL (2010) / (2007)

“DEATH AT A FUNERAL (American Version)” (Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence & many more second rate bad actors)

I had to see this just to see what they did with one of the most under-rated comedies in recent filmdom. I didn’t see the point – the British version was the funniest movie of 2007 – why would Chris Rock think that by making it about an American black family would improve it? When it was over, I was asking a different question to Chris – Why in the hell did you take a very funny film & make it as unfunny as you possibly could?
The main reason is the acting – I knew these characters from their British counterparts & they were funny (Only Peter Dinklage reprised his role from the original) - the same lines that were used in the original seemed stilted & forced coming from this cast – which is why I slammed them in the heading.
The most notable being James Marsden playing Oscar. Alan Tudyk in the original was named Simon & he was outstanding in the role – I thought he should have been given a Best Supporting Actor nod in ’07. Marsden just isn’t a very good actor – at least he paled in comparison to Tudyk’s performance.
Danny Glover was fine as cantankerous Uncle Russell, but the rest of the cast was quite bland, especially the horribly miscast Luke Wilson. And Tracy Morgan continues his streak of never having said anything that I found to be remotely humorous. In fact, I so dislike Morgan that when his character, Norman, gets splattered with feces, I was hoping they used actually diarrhea so he really did get a mouthful of s**t...
So if you’re thinking about seeing this because the trailer looked like it might be good – don’t go to the cinema, call around to rental places & ask if they have the British version available & watch that. In laugh-o-meter language, the original scored in the mid-40’s – this one got a 9.


“DEATH AT A FUNERAL” (British Version) A bunch of English actors, Jane Asher & Peter Dinklage.

This starts off ‘veddy’ British; a certain application of snobbery & low-key humor that doesn’t make you laugh as much as grin at how drolly ‘clever’ they are. Then, like that snowball in the opening to Rocky & Bullwinkle it starts to build momentum and when it’s over you realize you’ve just seen the funniest movie of 2007.
Jane Asher’s husband has just passed away; the funeral service is being held in her home where one of her two sons still resides. Daniel(Matthew MacFadyen) is married to Jane (Keeley Hawes) & they are in the process of putting a down payment on their own flat.
Jane’s other son, Robert (Rupert Graves) is a novelist living in New York – he flies in to pay his respects to his departed father.
The movie takes its time introducing the main characters as various Uncles, cousins & well-wishers arrive. Howard & Justin are called at the last second to pick up Uncle Alfie; a crotchety old coot confined to his wheelchair – there is an extremely funny (though somewhat disgusting) scene where poor Howard has to assist Uncle Alfie in getting to the ‘loo’ before he craps his pants.
Niece Martha (Daisy Donovan) with her just turned fiancé Simon (Alan Tudyk, who pulls off the most ‘demanding’ role) stop by to give her brother Troy(Kris Marshall) a ride to the funeral. Troy is studying to be a pharmacist; he has dozens of bottles of pills in his flat. Simon, suffering from a bad headache, brought about by the fact that Martha’s father hates him & will undoubtedly throw a tantrum when she announces their engagement, is given a valium by his bride-to-be.
Later, it is discovered that Troy put LSD tablets in the valium bottle so they would appear to be ‘innocent’ tablets. Sometimes Simon’s bizarre behavior is a little ‘over-the-top’, but most of the time, it is laugh out loud funny.
This gets the snowball rolling, and by the time my favorite ‘height-challenged’ actor, Peter Dinklage arrives at the service asking to have a ‘private’ conversation with Daniel about his ‘relationship’ with his late father – the snowball is unstoppable.
“Death At A Funeral” is dark, silly, subtle, grotesque, far-fetched, believable & uproariously funny – a veritable hodge podge of styles all wrapped into one film.
There is one very predictable scene – you know what’s going to happen when the 2 brothers put what they believe to be their father’s dead gay lover into his coffin with his corpse, but it’s still going to make you laugh when the inevitable pay off comes.
If there’s one drawback to this film, it’s that it has too many characters (& all speaking in that foreign language – English; at times I wished there were subtitles scrolled along the bottom of the screen) But the characters are so well-defined, and expertly portrayed, each with their own ‘quirk’ that they are easy to tell apart.
I did an injustice to the cast with my heading, but the truth is there are so many excellent performances by actors I’ve never seen before, it would take three or four lines to give them their due - &, unless you’re from the UK, I’m guessing you’ve never heard of them either – except Paul McCartney’s ‘Beatle-era girlfriend’, Jane Asher who looks nothing like I remember from the 60’s - & still, even with her wrinkles is much better looking than that one-legged dancing cow he regretfully married & dumped.
“Death At A Funeral” is a smart, offbeat comedy for those of us who don’t find low-rent crap like “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry” humorous.