This weekend my fiancée and I took a trip to Houston to meet with some friends. While there we decided to partake in a movie, and found ourselves, simply by the nature of timing, buying tickets for Death at a Funeral.

Synopsis

The movie starts with, predictably, a funeral. We transfer from an overhead animation of a coffin trolleying through the rural roads of Sussex en-route to a house-hold viewing. As the film transitions into live action, we meet the main character, Daniel (played by Matthew Macfadyen), who we quickly learn has been put in charge of organizing his father’s funeral.

What begins to unwind over the next hour-and-a-half is a series of events that conspire to produce a disaster of a funeral, but overall a quite good movie.

The Cast

Much of the cast will be largely un-recognizable for American viewers; although not all of it. Matthew Macfadyen’s most recent ‘major’ American release was as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Peter Dinklage plays a major role, and pulls it off with a serious dose of humor. Alan Tudyk plays one of the more major comedic roles, and is brilliant at it - he gained a lot of points in my book after Firefly, so I’m biased.

The Presentation

Watching this movie reminded me again and again of Fawlty Towers. While there is no direct sleezy counter-part to John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty, each character makes their fair share of bad decisions and mis-directions that lead the entire funeral to become a very messy affair.

Not everything about this movie is all fun and games, however. Just as in Fawlty, this movie has a tendency to go a little over-board. While this seems to work in a television presentation style, in a movie it can feel a little forced (did they really have to take it that far? - could that character really be that asinine?).

At the same time, some parts of the story-line as well as the reactions of some characters are just a little too predictable. Most notably, the brother of the main character, Robert (played by Rupert Graves), is the typical, selfish family member who has success but no heart. As with all of these roles, the main character feels a combination of jealousy and resentment toward the family member. By the end of the movie, this character has some reformation, and learns how to commit a self-less act. It feels like a tired (and some-what unrealistic) archetype.

Closing

Overall, I am happy I went to see this - the other option was The Last Legion, and while it looks like a good adventure, I’m so tired of the half-truthful tellings of ‘the sword and the stone’, and how somehow it becomes Excalibur (when did that happen exactly?).