Death At A Funeral

I watched Death At A Funeral because Dad wanted too and it was his turn to pick. I wasn't that fussed on it, but from the opening credits I was sure it was going to be much better than originally thought. And after it ended I knew I was going to have to get it on DVD. It's such a brilliant british comedy.

Daniel and Roberts father dies, bringing everyone in their dysfunctional family and group of friends together for his funeral at the family home. What should be a quiet and somber occasion is turned into complete chaos when one of the guests unkowningly takes some heavy duty drugs and a stranger turns up to extort money from the sons or he'll share secrets the family won't want to hear.

Matthew MacFadyen stars as the oldest brother trying to hold it all together. Alan Tudyk is Simon, the hallucinating brother-in-law and he's absolutely brilliant! He is such a fantastic actor, he steals the spotlight of every scene he's in. He's both hysterical and charasmatic, a winning combination. If the rest of the movie was poor I'd still watch it for Alan Tudyk alone, but lucky for me there's more great talent on show. Namely Andy Nyman as the nutty friend, Ewen Bremner as the creepy guy trying to get in to his ex-girlfriends pants, Rupert Graves as the younger brother, along with Daisy Donovan and Keeley Hawes as the long suffering woman of this crazy family. And we can't forget Peter Dinklage, the guy that is behind most of the chaos.

Death At A Funeral is hilarious. It's british comedy at it's best. It's subtle humour rather than slapstick one liners that Americans are so good at it. It's much smarter than that. The whole movie is set over one afternoon and in one location. That being said the director has done a great job of moving the action all over the house at such a fast pace that you don't get bored in one place. They have done a great job of keeping us all on our toes and laughing that you almost forget that it's supposed to be a somber occasion. You just can't help but laugh at all the hijinx.

This movie did so well and was so well loved that the Americans copied it. Yep, just last year they released their own version. I haven't watched it, but you should check out the trailers for both movies and see what you think. While I love both American and British comedies I think there's something inheritantly wrong with someone copying someone elses work. The humour doesn't often correlate and it doesn't this time either. I'm definetly all for the British version, they did it first and they do it best. Why would anyone else try and do it again. It's been done. And you'll notice, that it's the same actor playing the little dude that comes to bribe the family. Somehow that just makes it worse. This is the original 2007 British version http://matttrailer.com/death_at_a_funeral_2007 and this is the remake 2010 Amercian version http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1688273945/. You decide which version you watch, but please don't pick the American.

You want to watch this movie (the British version of course). If you have a sense of humour and you can appreciate poking fun a funeral, then you should watch this one. This one is a great one to watch with friends for a good old giggle.