Death at a Funeral
Directed by Frank Oz
Because the best movie this year so far has been Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, the next-best entertainments from Norbit to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry plus the audacity of both Resnais’ Private Fears in Public Places and Verhoeven’s Black Book, then several brilliant segments of The Ten and the expected excellence of The Simpsons Movie all give the impression that we are experiencing a renaissance of both high and low comedy. But now Death at a Funeral opens and wrecks the party.
You’d have to be a shameless Anglophile to tolerate this sub-BBC twaddle. It features a tony family’s effort to stiff-upper-lip their contempt for each other while holding a funeral for the patriarch. Each thin-skinned, middle-class character gives an unsurprising display of hauteur (envious brother Mathew Macfayden), lechery (successful novelist-brother Rupert Graves), bitchiness (sister Daisy Donovan), snobbery (mother Jane Asher), shyness (prelate Thomas Wheatley) and grossness (cousin Andy Nyman). Then there’s a drugged fiancé (Alan Tudyk), an incontinent senior citizen (Peter Vaughn) and a blackmailing American midget (Peter Dinklage) thrown in for extra inanity.
The silliness that ensues barely qualifies as a comedy of manners. Death at a Funeral disgraces the social observation that makes Hot Fuzz so much more than an action-comedy. Critics who wrongly praised Wright’s movie as a genre-satire did not appreciate that he used Hollywood movie formula—the globally admired moxie of American pop entertainment—to critique the myth of British politesse and the reality of England’s imperious, parochial culture. It’s easier for fools to accept and prefer the over-enunciated foolery in Death at a Funeral as demonstration of classy British humor.
Director Frank Oz crudely imitates the low farce of A Fish Called Wanda, that mutation of Ealing comedy that seemed to come from no place and went nowhere. Hot Fuzz understood the national British character, Oz mistakes caricature for the real thing. The title, Death at a Funeral, alludes to nothing; Oz doesn’t even realize England’s changing national face or the comedy inherent in post-colonialism. That’s the sub-BBC dullness. Even the blackmailer’s holding a family secret seems regressive. This is a pre-Thatcher era freakshow. Anyone who laughs at it cackles in a void.
Screenwriter Dean Craig’s basic premise rips off Juzo Itami’s superb 1989 Japanese film The Funeral, where complicated family relations were revealed during the violated protocol of an official burial ceremony. (Once again, Itami—one of the bright spots of 1980s cinema, now forgotten—haunts this year’s movies: Chabrol’s Comedy of Power evoked A Taxing Woman Returns, No Reservations evoked Tampopo and now Oz flubs The Funeral’s example of authentic poignance and humor.) The film’s family behavior isn’t universally recognizable, just fake.
It’s a fallacy that British actors are inherently better than American actors. Death at a Funeral is full of performers you regret having to watch and never want to see again. Their crude slapstick compares badly to the improvised wit of The Ten where actors from Paul Rudd to Gretchen Mol, Justin Theroux to Ken Marino, Famke Jensen to a totally rehabilitated Winona Ryder contribute marvelous, original characterizations. The Ten’s cast seems comically inspired. It so happens that their mischievous ingenuity resembles a British comedy that went unappreciated just a few years back: Love, Honour and Obey, by Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis, where Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Sadie Frost and Kathy Hughes, satirized the gangster genre with Cockney skits and musical numbers that offered the good cheer of a multitalented theater troupe. The dearth of comedy in Death at a Funeral looks like the death of British theatrical tradition.
Directed by Frank Oz
Because the best movie this year so far has been Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, the next-best entertainments from Norbit to I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry plus the audacity of both Resnais’ Private Fears in Public Places and Verhoeven’s Black Book, then several brilliant segments of The Ten and the expected excellence of The Simpsons Movie all give the impression that we are experiencing a renaissance of both high and low comedy. But now Death at a Funeral opens and wrecks the party.
You’d have to be a shameless Anglophile to tolerate this sub-BBC twaddle. It features a tony family’s effort to stiff-upper-lip their contempt for each other while holding a funeral for the patriarch. Each thin-skinned, middle-class character gives an unsurprising display of hauteur (envious brother Mathew Macfayden), lechery (successful novelist-brother Rupert Graves), bitchiness (sister Daisy Donovan), snobbery (mother Jane Asher), shyness (prelate Thomas Wheatley) and grossness (cousin Andy Nyman). Then there’s a drugged fiancé (Alan Tudyk), an incontinent senior citizen (Peter Vaughn) and a blackmailing American midget (Peter Dinklage) thrown in for extra inanity.
The silliness that ensues barely qualifies as a comedy of manners. Death at a Funeral disgraces the social observation that makes Hot Fuzz so much more than an action-comedy. Critics who wrongly praised Wright’s movie as a genre-satire did not appreciate that he used Hollywood movie formula—the globally admired moxie of American pop entertainment—to critique the myth of British politesse and the reality of England’s imperious, parochial culture. It’s easier for fools to accept and prefer the over-enunciated foolery in Death at a Funeral as demonstration of classy British humor.
Director Frank Oz crudely imitates the low farce of A Fish Called Wanda, that mutation of Ealing comedy that seemed to come from no place and went nowhere. Hot Fuzz understood the national British character, Oz mistakes caricature for the real thing. The title, Death at a Funeral, alludes to nothing; Oz doesn’t even realize England’s changing national face or the comedy inherent in post-colonialism. That’s the sub-BBC dullness. Even the blackmailer’s holding a family secret seems regressive. This is a pre-Thatcher era freakshow. Anyone who laughs at it cackles in a void.
Screenwriter Dean Craig’s basic premise rips off Juzo Itami’s superb 1989 Japanese film The Funeral, where complicated family relations were revealed during the violated protocol of an official burial ceremony. (Once again, Itami—one of the bright spots of 1980s cinema, now forgotten—haunts this year’s movies: Chabrol’s Comedy of Power evoked A Taxing Woman Returns, No Reservations evoked Tampopo and now Oz flubs The Funeral’s example of authentic poignance and humor.) The film’s family behavior isn’t universally recognizable, just fake.
It’s a fallacy that British actors are inherently better than American actors. Death at a Funeral is full of performers you regret having to watch and never want to see again. Their crude slapstick compares badly to the improvised wit of The Ten where actors from Paul Rudd to Gretchen Mol, Justin Theroux to Ken Marino, Famke Jensen to a totally rehabilitated Winona Ryder contribute marvelous, original characterizations. The Ten’s cast seems comically inspired. It so happens that their mischievous ingenuity resembles a British comedy that went unappreciated just a few years back: Love, Honour and Obey, by Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis, where Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Sadie Frost and Kathy Hughes, satirized the gangster genre with Cockney skits and musical numbers that offered the good cheer of a multitalented theater troupe. The dearth of comedy in Death at a Funeral looks like the death of British theatrical tradition.
