Death at a Funeral (2010)

Playwright Neil LaBute seems like a jarringly odd choice of a director to take someone else’s work, written in an entirely different tone from his own, and assemble a film from it in a director-for-hire invisible style. This is the man who brought us the angry “In the Company of Men,” among other things.

But maybe the guy wanted a break, looking no further back than a few years for source material on his latest film, DEATH AT A FUNERAL, an African-American version of a perfectly enjoyable British comedy from just a few years ago. This remake is almost a paint-by-numbers “cover” of that relatively unsubstantial but fun-to-watch 2007 film, and even features Peter Dinklage in the exact same role from the original, but with a different name.

Given the fact that the purpose Dinklage’s character serves in the film is one of its best comedic surprises, LaBute must have been confident that the audience that this DEATH sought to reach had not seen the original; it’s a surprisingly hilarious and shocking bit.

In this version, Chris Rock is Aaron, the man responsible with organizing his father’s funeral, which is to be held at the family home. Mother Cynthia (Loretta Devine) is in no condition to be of any assistance, and things start to go wrong early on when the body the funeral home delivers to the house is not his father’s.

The supporting cast of wacky funeral attendees are a perfect storm of mayhem-in-waiting. Aaron’s brother Ryan, played by Martin Lawrence, flies in from New York to attend; he is now a successful writer and a thorn in Aaron’s side for succeeding in a profession Aaron himself aspires to, and with lesser material to boot. A family friend is placed in charge of getting a crabby, unpredictable and wheelchair-bound uncle to the funeral, and a niece arrives with her white fiancé, to the instant disappointment of her father.

Making matters even more ridiculous, that white fiancé, played by James Marsden in the film’s most lively comedic performance, has taken what he thought to be a valium in an attempt to calm his nerves about being in the presence of her family, only to discover that it was LSD, a mistake that an audience might think could never happen but one that the film makes relatively believable. Naturally, this is also a plot device that allows Marsden’s Oscar to engage in the most erratic behavior of all, and Oscar memorably spends a large chunk of the film completely naked and on the roof of the house.

The relationship here between Aaron and Ryan sucks a lot of the comedic joy from the film, and it’s hard to buy Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence as brothers. But a ridiculously good Marsden is flanked by a crabby Danny Glover, the always-wonderful Devine and the always-clueless Tracy Morgan, each of whom delivers on whatever jokes they are given.

Dinklage, called Frank in this version, has the same purpose in this film as he did in the original, as I’ve mentioned before. He’s a fish-out-of-water guest at the funeral, in the original because of his dwarf stature and here because of his skin color as well. And I won’t spoil his purpose in the film for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, because it’s worth a good laugh, though I will caution that LaBute is not as successful in hiding the surprise for as long as Frank Oz did in the original. (I’m sure it was hard, though, for me to observe this with any kind of objectivity, as I knew what would come to pass going in.)

DEATH AT A FUNERAL was an unnecessary remake but a universal and simple enough story to merit an American reboot good for a few hours on the couch when all of your network favorites are reruns and you want a good laugh or two. It’s by no means a disaster; neither is it anything to remember.

2.0 out of 4