DEATH AT A FUNERAL
Director: Frank Oz Stars: Matthew MacFadyen, Rupert Graves, Jane Asher, Keeley Hawkes, Peter Egan, Peter Vaughan, Andy Nyman, Daisy Donovan, Kris Marshall, Ewen Bremner, Alan Tudyk, Peter Dinklage
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
A tongue-in-cheek title which sounds something like an Agatha Christie title. And, it all takes place in a village which, in its more sedate past, might have been a setting for Miss Marple to do her investigations.
This comedy and farce is much less sedate – and is directed by Frank Oz who knows how to be irreverent since he began voicing Miss Piggy and other Muppet characters more than thirty years ago. He has also directed some funny comedies including Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and In And Out. This comic flair serves him well here as his flamboyance is tempered by a very British setting with some stiff upper lips having to become quite, quite loose.
The amusing credit sequence traces a hearse travelling along the country roads on a map – and getting lost. An obvious joke follows but it is handled with aplomb and gets the audience laughing. The atmosphere gradually builds up as we are introduced to all those going to the funeral. Some of the stories are serious, others farcical. And, gradually, things get right out of hand what with some hallucinogenic tablets mistaken for vallium (which propels the plot right until the end), a mysterious dwarf with some incriminating photos, an extra death which one knows will lead to the corpse being hidden in the coffin, and hilariously being discovered… and more.
It goes for only 90 minutes but, apart from the swearing and some innuendo, most audiences will have smiles or get some good (and some surprise) laughs.
Matthew MacFadyen has to hold the film together in the serious role as the son of the deceased and he achieves this very well. Rupert Graves is his self-centred novelist brother. Jane Asher is their proper mother. Keeley Hawes as MacFadyen’s wife provides the pleasantly normal anchor to the proceedings. In the meantime there are some funny turns by Andy Nyman as a hypochondriac, Peter Vaughan as the irascible old uncle, Kris Marshall as the student who has put the hallucinogenics in a vallium bottle and American Alan Tudyk who has the most difficult role of all, the ordinary young man who has been given the wrong vallium and who hallucinates accordingly. Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) is the mysterious dwarf.
Old style British comedy with a 21st century tone.