Death at a Funeral – 2007 | 90 mins | Black Comedy | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Death at the Funeral is Frank Oz’s first film since his clunky remake of The Stepford Wives, and this gross-out British farce aimed at American audiences is perhaps not black enough to follow in the footsteps of the many sinister comedies also made at Ealing Studios. Dean Craig’s schematic screenplay gathers an eccentric group of family and friends together at a country-house funeral but the results are predictable and dull. The set-up is basically two gags flogged to death on a t solemn occasion; one mourner’s hallucinatory naked escapades and a diminutive guests blackmail revelations.

On the morning of their father’s funeral, the family and friends of the deceased each arrive with his or her own roiling anxieties. Son and wannabe writer Daniel (Matthew MacFadyen) knows he will have to face his flirty, blow-hard, famous-novelist brother Robert (Rupert Graves) who’s just flown in from New York, not to mention the promises of a new life he’s made to his wife Jane (Keely Hawes). Meanwhile, Daniel’s cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan) and her dependable new fiancé Simon (Alan Tudyk) are desperate to make a good impression on Martha’s uptight father, Peter Egan (Peter Egan) – a plan that literally goes out the window when Simon accidentally ingests a designer drug en route to the service, leaving him prone to uncontrollable bouts of delirium and nudity in front of his potential in-laws.

Meanwhile, Martha must contend with fighting off the attentions of one-night stand Justin (Ewen Bremner), and Howard (Andy Nyman) gets into bother aiding disabled Uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan) use the toilet. Then comes the real shocker: a diminutive mysterious guest (Peter Dinklage) who threatens to unveil an earth-shattering family secret. As riotous mayhem and unfortunate mishaps ensue on every front, it is now up to the two brothers to hide the truth from their family and friends and figure out how to not only bury their dearly beloved, but the secret he’s been keeping.