Death at a Funeral
Director: Frank Oz. Screenplay: Dean Craig. Cinematography: Oliver Curtis. Film editing: Beverley Mills. Production design: Michael Howells. Music: Murray Gold. Producers: Sidney Kimmel, Laurence Malkin, Diana Phillips, Share Stallings. With: Matthew MacFadyen, Keeley Hawes, Andy Nyman, Ewen Bremner, Daisy Donovan, Alan Tudyk, Jane Asher, Kris Marshall, Rupert Graves, Peter Vaughan, Thomas Wheatley, Peter Egan, Peter Dinklage, Gareth Milne, Kelly Eastwood. Germany/UK/USA. 90 min. 2007.
It’s an easy variation on a handful of well-worn themes: Take a dysfunctional family, a blackmailer armed with the patriarch’s darkest secret, and a batch of psychedelic drugs in a harmless-looking Valium bottle; throw them together at the patriarch’s funeral; and expect the audience to laugh no matter how obvious or overworked the gags turn out to be. Peter Dinklage is excellent as the blackmailer, Ewan Bremner is always interesting to watch, and Frank Oz keeps the energy level impressively high, but that’s about all the movie has to offer. There’s more humor and humanity in any ten minutes of TV’s brilliant Six Feet Under than in this picture’s overlong hour and a half. – David Sterritt
