Death at a Funeral (’10)
Don’t misunderstand me- Neil LaBute’s “Death at a Funeral” is very funny. The cast is well-chosen, the story is intact, and when the film hits a laugh, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen this year.
But there’s something about Dean Craig’s screenplay that just worked better with British accents. I easily accepted Matthew MacFayden as a dour son who’s trying to just get through his father’s death, even if it includes constantly fielding questions as to why his author brother isn’t delivering the eulogy. Chris Rock, while good, just feels a bit out of place in the role. And the scenario felt a little more real, and a little less broad, under the watchful eye of Frank Oz; for LaBute (“In the Company of Men,” “Nurse Betty”), it feels less grounded in a tangible reality and more like, well, a movie.
That said, there’s a lot to love about this film, especially in the performances. The two showiest roles in the original- the tripping fiancee and the diminutive guest with secrets- are the comic highlights here as well, with James Marsden matching up with Alan Tudyk’s manic turn with just the right blend of craziness and worry, and Peter Dinklage reprising his role beautifully here (I couldn’t help but Tweet last night how good a sport Dinklage was for doing so). And Danny Glover as the cranky uncle a friend of the family (here, Tracy Morgan, not always as good as his Oz-directed counterpart, but sometimes very funny) is left to attend to, is a stroke of casting genius, even allowing him to reference his famous line from “Lethal Weapon.”
The point of remaking this film almost shot-for-shot from the original is a bit unclear. It was just fine the way Oz did it. In a way, though, it’s like the Gus Van Sant-directed “Psycho” from 1998- the point, I think, is to see what different actors can do with the same material. The experiment works better here than it did with that misguided project (Luke Wilson, Ron Glass, Martin Lawrence, and Zoe Saldana also succeed in their roles), but mainly because comedy feels more at home with such ideas than a serious film would. And you do get a lot of great jokes out of this version that would’ve felt out of place in the original. But if the point is to show that any situation is universal, do we really need to remake it for another culture to show that? The best movie’s do it without needing to be remade. Still, if this film causes people to search out Oz’s version, all the better. There is that value to remakes after all.
