As is commonly said, nothing is certain in life other than death and taxes. Neither is particularly funny in real life, but in the movies, they can be good for a laugh, although far more of them focus on the former rather than the latter. Yet, as they also like to say (at least among comedians), dying is easy while comedy is hard.
The latter point is proven quite explicitly in "Death at a Funeral," a British export that clearly falls into the black comedy category. That sub-genre is notorious for littering the world of cinema with failed projects, and one can add this one to that ever-growing list.
Directed by Frank Oz ("Bowfinger," "In & Out") from a script by Dean Craig, the film tells the supposed comedy tale of the funeral for a British patriarch. Not surprisingly, the humor is designed to originate from the various things that can and do go wrong at such events, as well as the unsettling personal and family revelations that often arise from or along with that.
The story starts off somewhat promisingly enough -- even if the gag isn't exactly novel -- when the wrong body is delivered to the house for the service. One of the sons -- played by Matthew MacFadyen -- has to make that visual I.D. and that wrong cadaver is promptly returned and replaced. Things only go south from there, not only for his and the rest of the characters, but also the film in general.
For starters, the to-be-expected familial tensions aren't particularly funny. Rupert Graves plays the other brother who's a bit of a self-centered jerk whose success in the writing world has overshadowed his sibling. I'm not sure how much humor could be derived from that in concept, but little is delivered through the execution chosen by the filmmakers.
There are plenty of other such intra-family squabbles -- involving spouses, disapproving fathers, bumbling fiancés, cantankerous old relatives and much more -- but they similarly don't provide much in the way of imaginative or clever laughs. What's offered has been seen before and often much better.
Although it strangely proved to be quite popular with our preview audience that laughed heartily at each such occurrence, the filmmakers oddly and unwisely decided to utilize one running gag and then beat it to death through mostly unvarying repetition. And that involves the fiancé character played by Alan Tudik unknowingly being given particularly strong hallucinogens by his future bride (Daisy Donovan -- thinking it's Valium) and then being high for much of the film.
While that's mildly amusing at first, Oz and company repeatedly return to this well so often (how many times does one need to see the fully nude, high dude acting in a goofy and embarrassing fashion) that it not only runs dry, but also ends up pretty much siphoning away most of the comedy sustenance from the rest of the film.
Except, that is, unless you find it funny that the ornery, wheelchair bound uncle needs to use the bathroom, and his unofficial caretaker than gets such excrement on his hand and face (I guess some don't ever outgrow "poop" jokes).
The one thing with a little bit of potential is a subplot featuring Peter Dinklage as a stranger who crashes the funeral with a secret he's dying to reveal, if only for some blackmail money.
The problem is that the hush-hush subject is far too easy to predict (as is a late-in-the-film pop-up surprise), and while Dinklage gives it his all from a physical comedy standpoint, the laughs never develop beyond the status of amusing at best.
As with that particular material, one can see what the filmmakers were after, and how they were trying to achieve it. Unfortunately, at least in this viewer's opinion, it just doesn't work as intended, and rather than being funny let alone hilarious, most of it comes off as labored and redundant, with easy rather than creative laughs.
"Death at a Funeral" isn't entirely dead on arrival, but it never manages to get off cinematic life support to deliver the comedy like it should and could have. The film rates as a 3.5 out of 10.
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