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24 films that influenced Death at a Funeral
What critics say influenced Death at a Funeral
It’s simply played too flatly, and it certainly pales in comparison to, say, Bryan Forbes’ much darker The Wrong Box (1966) with its coffin mix-ups and venal undertakers, who try to palm off a 3-foot box (“Get the flag, they’ll never notice”) as the remains of a loved one.
(Perhaps in homage to the funnier The Wrong Box, undertakers first bring...the wrong box.)
Long-suffering son Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen, "Pride and Prejudice") shoulders the burden of handling arrangements while prodigal son and novelist (Rupert Graves, "V for Vendetta") breezes in from New York to sop up praise from admiring townspeople.
(This is the same guy who was Mr. Darcy in the recent version of Pride and Prejudice.
Things begin farcically enough, with funeral managers delivering the wrong coffin to the country house where Daniel (MacFayden, the dashing Mr. Darcy of 2005's Pride and Prejudice, here playing lumpy and deferential) lives with his wife (Hawes, his real-life spouse), his mother (Asher, who's looking damn good — Paul McCartney could do worse than to look up his longtime ex), and, up until recently, his father, he of the titular funeral.
Macfadyen appears pastier and puffier than the dashing Mr. Darcy he played in Pride and Prejudice.
In the film, Matthew Macfayden (Pride and Prejudice) plays Daniel, a struggling writer who faces the challenge of keeping his family together after the death of his father.
Matthew Macfadyen (from the Keira Knightley "Pride and Prejudice") heads the ensemble, playing a British man at his parents' country house nervously trying to arrange his father's funeral.
Howard (Andy Nyman, "Severance") and Justin (Ewen Bremner, "Trainspotting") struggle with irritable, wheelchair-bound Uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan, Anthony Hopkins' dad in "The Remains of the Day").
The ceremonies surrounding death have provided fodder for comedy classics as disparate as The Funeral (from Tampopo director Juzo Itami) and The Loved One (a movie where cameos from Tab Hunter and Liberace were of a piece with the general air of lunacy).
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And then there is that mysterious 'small person' (Peter Dinklage, "The Station Agent," "Find Me Guilty") who keeps trying to get Daniel's attention.
Peter Dinklage once again cashes in on The Station Agent with a performance hammier than the one he gives in Underdog .
However, things start to rattle and hum nicely when Peter Dinklage ("The Station Agent"), a small man with a big secret, appears.
Out of all of them, it's one of the cast's few Yanks -- Peter Dinklage ("The Station Agent," "Underdog"), as the extortionist -- who really fans the flames, threatening to reveal a secret of the dearly departed's in front of the entire funeral party if the dead man's sons don't pay to keep it buried.
Cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan, "Millions") and her patriarchically loathed fiance Simon (Alan Tudyk, "Serenity," "Knocked Up") stop to pick up Martha's brother Troy (Kris Marshall, "Love Actually") whose apartment is strewn with mislabelled pill bottles (wow, I cannot see where this is going...and going...and going).
I can count on one hand the number of movies that make me laugh out loud, long and hard, no matter how many dozens of times I’ve seen them -- The Princess Bride and Midnight Run, definitely; Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are about to be added to the list... and I think that’s it.
And it's not just because of his strangely amusing cameos in movies like The Blues Brothers, Trading Places and Spies Like Us, either.
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The movie, a madcap British farce from director Frank Oz ("Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," "In & Out," the voice of Miss Piggy), offers a few solid laughs and is generally fun, but it's nothing great.
Let’s hope the Muppet man-turned-director has another Bowfinger or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels left in him.
At the helm of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, he paired Steve Martin and Michael Caine to comedic effect, ditto Martin and Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger .
(God bless Ingmar!) Instead, this broad farce blows the coffin lid off dignified send-offs, thanks to Dean Craig’s screwball script and the deft direction by Frank Oz, who previously helmed Bowfinger, In & Out and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Three more very solid comedies would follow -- Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob? and Housesitter -- before Frank tackled family fare once more with The Indian in the Cupboard.
But when turned loose on accessible, not-altogether-insincere dark-comedy scenarios — “What About Bob?,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “In & Out” — Oz understands humor at a molecular level of structure, volume and timing.
I made the same complaint about The Hudsucker Proxy, and that came out more than a decade ago.