Death at a Funeral

Review by Anthony Morris
Read Interview with Funeral's Alan Tudyk - Click Here

Setting a comedy during a funeral might not be the most tasteful idea ever, but neither is it the most original. It is a problem that haunts this film, from long-time comedy writer / director Frank Oz, from start to finish. 

If you like your comedies full of young, handsome, relatively well-off English people straight out of a Richard Curtis film, you won't be able to keep away from this one. If, on the other hand, you happen to prize originality in your comedy and think the best laugh is one that comes as a surprise - you might be a little less impressed.

Not that there's not a lot to admire and enjoy in this well-constructed and well-acted farce, as a day that should involve solemn remembrance of a deceased father and husband ends up with two of the deceased sons trying to hide a corpse in his coffin while their sister's fiancée jumps around naked on the roof.

It's just that pretty much all the jokes are predictable: when the undertakers bring in a closed coffin at the movie's beginning you just know there's going to be a wacky mix-up, when it's revealed that one of the dead man's sons is a secret drug dealer you know someone's going to accidentally get off their nut, and when a mysterious little person turns up at the funeral clearly heart-broken over the death you don't have to be a comedy expert to spot where things are heading. 

Competent but predictable: if that's what you want from a comedy, then you'll love this.

3 out of 5

Death at a Funeral
Australian release: 11th October, 2007
Cast: Mathew Macfadyen, Rupert Graves, Alan Tudyk, Daisy Donovan
Director: Frank Oz
Website: Click here.