Posted: 08/26/2007

Death at a Funeral

(2007)

by Matt Wedge

It’s been a great week for comedies. While Superbad was the big hit (justifiably so) of last weekend, Death at a Funeral, a low-budget British farce, was snuck into theaters in limited release. While it’s hardly an original film, it’s reliably funny and distracts nicely for 90 minutes, sending you on your way with a contented smile on your face.

Daniel (Matthew MacFadyen, Enigma) is the Everyman at the center of the storm that is his father’s funeral. While trying to handle the stress of making sure that the funeral moves as smoothly as possible, he is also trying to deal with his grieving mother, his wife’s terribly timed questions about moving to a new apartment and the reappearance (and subsequent feelings of jealousy) of his successful, globe-trotting brother. This being a farce of almost epically British proportions, it’s no surprise when things take a turn for the chaotic. Acting as gasoline to be thrown on the fire are a bottle of extreme hallucinogenic pills constantly mistaken for valium and the appearance of a stranger with surprising reports of a secret life with the deceased. To give any more of the plot details away would be unfair.

With any farce, all that matters is how many laughs it elicits. In this case, the answer is chuckles throughout, punctuated by about five moments of hard, tears-rolling-down-the-cheeks moments. While the characters are barely more than stereotypes, it’s the wonderful way that each absurd situation builds on the previous that makes the script by Dean Craig work. Also very funny is the way he plays with the British stereotype of the “stiff upper lip” that quivers under the strain of everything that goes wrong. It’s really a blast to watch this many restrained characters crack under the pressure and turn into blubbering children.

While the large, ensemble cast works well together, a few members really shine. MacFadyen’s quiet demeanor and expressive face serve as a much-needed steadying force amidst the chaos. As a nervous wreck who falls victim to the drug mix-up, Alan Tudyk (Serenity) is given the showiest role and runs with it, spending half the movie in the buff and wringing every last moment for all the laughs he can. Finally given a role that doesn’t play off of his diminutive stature, Peter Dinklage (Elf) manages to steal the few scenes he’s given as the stranger who intrudes on the funeral. With little more than a few lines of well-written dialogue and a stare that seems to look right through people to see their true agendas, he’s a powerful screen presence who can bring about menace and laughs in equal measure. This is truly a great performance that proves he deserves to be cast in more roles like this.

It would have been easy for the large number of characters and their myriad storylines to become tangled, but director Frank Oz (the very funny In & Out and the very bad remake of The Stepford Wives) keeps things sailing smoothly along, never letting any one scene carry on too long. He gets the maximum number of laughs out of each moment and wisely ends the film as soon as the farce of the situation is over. While this lack of a substantial resolution might leave some people feeling empty, I appreciated the fact that he followed the number-one rule of show business: always leave the audience wanting more. The lesson that it’s better to cut a movie just a bit short than to have it overstay its welcome is one that more filmmakers would do well to learn.

All in all, this was one of the more pleasant surprises of the summer. I hope MGM expands its release in the coming weeks because it would be a shame to let this film wither and die in a limited release. It deserves better than that.

Matt Wedge is a writer and film reviewer living in Chicago.

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