Death at a Funeral (2010)

Year 13, Day 121 - 5/1/21 - Movie #3,825

BEFORE: Danny Glover carries over from "The Color Purple", and it's been a rather odd week - perhaps there's no rhyme nor reason to it, having covered life, death, racism, sexism, Walt Disney, Andy Kaufman, Action Park, being and non-being and everything in between.  Maybe life is a big theme park where you struggle for your place in line and you die on one of the rides, I don't know.  Who can say? But I'm going to wrap up the week with a funeral, so maybe that's appropriate for this weird week.  

There are two versions of this film, one released in 2007 with a British cast, and this one, released in 2010 with an American, mostly African-American, cast.  They share an actor, so the most logical thing to do is watch them back-to-back - well, I'm not going to do the logical thing, because then I couldn't line up a film for Mother's Day, believe me, I tried.  So I WILL watch the other version of "Death at a Funeral", but it will be in about a week and a half, OK?  It's all going to work out, I'm used to my chains looping back on themselves, it happens - as long as there's one solid through-line it doesn't really matter. 

First, here are my format stats for April's movies: 

7 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): American Honey, The Greatest Game Ever Played, The Killer Inside Me, Mary Magdalene, 21 Bridges, Beloved, The Color Purple

8 watched on Netflix: The Old Guard, Da 5 Bloods, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Project Power, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Becoming, Knock Down the House, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond

2 watched on iTunes: Ain't Them Bodies Saints, The Accidental President
5 watched on Amazon Prime: Coming 2 America, I'm Not Here, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, All In: The Fight for Democracy, Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump
1 watched on Hulu: Palm Springs
3 watched on Disney+: The Lion King (2019), Soul, Walt & El Grupo
2 watched on Tubi: The Brothers Bloom, Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook

2 watched on HBO MAX: John Lewis: Good Trouble, Class Action Park
1 watched on a random site: Walt: The Man Behind the Myth
31 TOTAL

It sure was a big month for Netflix, but that's good, because my watchlist on that service was getting huge.  Dipping into documentaries for a week and a half helped cut that list down - but I can't recall the last month where I watched more films on Netflix than on cable.  Maybe that's the future for me, but I think the May schedule will be more cable-heavy, I've got to clear some space on the DVR to make room for new stuff, that's the new goal.  Plus I haven't even logged in half of the new films on Netflix yet, and I can't exactly link to them before I log them in, now, can I?  I'm working on it, typing just as fast as I can.  

What's weird is that this version of "Death on a Funeral" has been in my Netflix queue for some time, I think I added it about 6 months ago, and it's just been there, patiently waiting for me to find a way to link to it.  I put May's schedule together in maybe late March or early April, but now, of course, it's GONE from Netflix, just before I planned to watch it.  No worries, there's always iTunes, even though I'd have to pay $2.99, whatever preserves the chain, right?  But the film just started running on Showtime, like it premiered TODAY, that's an odd coincidence - yet also a bit reassuring, if a film disappears from one service, that could mean it's about to pop up on another. It's a formula that I just can't quite figure out, maybe nobody can - still, weird. 

THE PLOT: A funeral ceremony turns into a debacle of exposed family secrets and misplaced bodies. 

AFTER: This one started out with a lot of promise, as the various family members gather for a patriarch's funeral, the funeral director misplaces the body, the wrong casket is delivered.  It's a solid start, but as things wear on, it's one wacky mishap after another, and they become more and more unlikely, which causes a sort of comedy de-evolution.  At some point, more isn't better, it's just more, and that's too bad.  A little less might have been more here, because too many unlikely things, even in comedy, starts to border on impossible.  

Sure, there are conflicts between brothers, or between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters-in-law, and between fathers and potential sons-in-law.  All that's to be expected when nobody feels they can live up to the previous generation's expectations.  Somebody's got to pick up their no-good little brother, someone's got to pick up Uncle Russell and his wheelchair from the nursing home, and everybody's got issues to work out.  The white boyfriend can't possibly meet the expectations of his girlfriend's father, especially when he's perceived as a screw-up, compared to her previous white boyfriend, who's also been invited to the funeral.  No, that won't be awkward at all.  

Let's face it, the whole funeral's a big pile of awkward - already funerals are uncomfortable places where nobody really wants to be, and then when you throw a bunch of family issues, race issues, and a mislabeled vial of "not valium" into the mix, stuff's going to go down.  Does it put the "FUN" back in "funeral"?  Initially I thought it might, but then as things got crazier and crazier, I realized I'd have to lower my expectations...

It's not that the jokes aren't funny, some of them are, I laughed out loud a few times at first - but with so many plotlines going on simultaneously, time after time every conversation felt stuck in second gear, with one character or another excusing themselves because of that OTHER thing going on, or saying, "Just one minute, I'll answer your question, but I have to handle this..." I began to realize that nearly everything was a delaying tactic.  Wait two minutes and the scene would shift back to another room where another emergency was being mishandled, and by that point it's just like a bedroom farce only without any sex.  Bouncing back and forth, trying to keep so many comedic balls up in the air at the same time, it feels like it takes forever to get anywhere.  For God's sake, just stay on that character long enough for him to answer a question or decide on an action, without cutting to the other thing in the other room!

No lie, there's one character who took the mislabeled drug and is stoned out of his mind, the ovulating wife who somehow thinks the day of a funeral might also be a good time to conceive a baby (no, it just isn't...), there's the crazy old uncle complaining about the lack of potato salad, the Reverend who's missing two other funerals because of all the delays at THIS one, and then there's the whole mysterious stranger who shows up and calls everything the family knew about the deceased into question - and I'm only really scratching the surface here, because NO SPOILERS.  But a lot goes down, and it's a lot to take in.  Danny Glover references his "Lethal Weapon" by stating he's too old for this shit, and I'm starting to feel the same way.

This sort of started out like a "6" but it really didn't finish that way.  Now I'm not sure if I want to watch the original - I mean, sure, I will, but I hope it's a lot different.  If this remake just copied all the plotlines from the original that's not going to excite me.  I mean, I'll muddle through and watch it, but will I enjoy it?  Is that even possible at this point? 

NITPICK POINT: Some of the comedy points are only possible because the funeral was held at the family home - but does anyone really DO that?  Don't we have funeral homes for a reason, so we don't have to have dead people in our houses?  I can see people having a wedding in a big home, but these days, who has a big drawing room that will hold a crowd like this?  

Also starring Chris Rock (last seen in "A Very Murray Christmas"), Martin Lawrence (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), Tracy Morgan (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Loretta Devine (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Regina Hall (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Zoe Saldana (last heard in "Missing Link"), James Marsden (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Columbus Short (last seen in "The Losers"), Luke Wilson (last seen in "Zombieland: Double Tap"), Keith David (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Ron Glass, Kevin Hart (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Regine Nehy, Bob Minor. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 folding chairs