Death at a Funeral

Posted by Ty Nelson (roner34@sbcglobal.net) on August 20, 2007

One of the awkward things about funerals is meeting all the of the deceased acquaintances. No matter how well you think you knew the departed, odds are there is somebody else in attendance who knew them in a completely different light. So imagine meeting Peter (Peter Dinklage) at your father’s funeral. Peter catches your eye right away, he’s a midget after-all, and asks to talk. He then shows pictures of your father and him dressed as Romans and you soon figure out Peter was more than just “Dad’s friend’.

Death at a Funeral follows the service for the recently deceased patriarch of a middle-class British family. We have a good idea what to expect after the opening scene when the wrong body is delivered to the family. After the right body finally shows up and the service can begin. Enter the bereaved: Daniel (Matthew MacFayden) is the slightly neurotic son who is doing his best to keep things together while making to plans to break away. Robert (Rupert Graves) is the successful but flaky older brother who seems more interested in picking up girls than actually mourning his father. Cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan) shows up with her fiancee Simon (Alan Tudyk) seeking the approval of her father. Simon has a problem though, he accidentally takes some hallucinogenic drugs and precedes to “trip out” during the course of the day. Throw in various aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, and blackmailing gay midgets and the madness begins.

Story-wise this is not groundbreaking material here. It is your basic dysfunctional family. Everyone has their own baggage and they all mostly seem to work through it. They all have reasons to be caught up in their own worlds and not give a crap about everyone else. Of course by the end of the movie they all have a greater understanding of what means to be a part of a family and blah, blah, blah. It’s not really about any of that, it’s about making an audience laugh.

What saves this film from being like all the other dysfunctional family films are two key performances. Alan Tudyk is absolutely superb as Simon. Suffering from an anxiety attack he takes what he thinks are a couple of Valium, not knowing it’s acid. Soon after he is urging toilet paper to be free before he ends up naked on the roof of a house. Also memorable is Peter Dinklage as the grieving secret lover. Just the shock of his being there is enough for some nervous laughter, but his “jack-in-the-box” moment makes his performance one of the funniest of the year.

Death at a Funeral is a manic romp from director Frank Oz (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What about Bob?, and Bowfinger). Oz has a great Robert Altman-like talent for managing large casts into organized chaos but this also leads to the film biggest flaw.

It takes too long to set all the pieces into place. The pacing for the first half of the movie is slow with only a few funny parts. This is somewhat forgivable since we’re dealing with a large and very diverse group of characters. A few more jokes early on would have helped though. Luckily things pick up about halfway through and never looks back. Death at a Funeral is not the funniest film you will ever see, but it is worth your time.

If you liked Six Feet Under, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, or Elizabethtown you might like Death at a Funeral.

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