A Very British Genre

Death at a Funeral - 3/5

Nobody does a farce, especially a black farce, quite like the British, whether it be on stage or screen. Death at a Funeral has all the right elements - a dead body, blackmail, accidentally ingested hallucinogenics. If the resulting film is slightly hit and miss, it is certainly more on the hit side. The moments that fall flatter are when it strays into more gross-out territory - one toilet gag being particularly unnecessary and unfunny. Lets leave the gross out to the Yanks. Oh, and old people swearing lots is no longer shocking enough to be funny by itself.

This marks something of a return to comedy form for director Frank Oz after the disappointing remake of The Stepford Wives, and he has assembled a veritable who's who of British B-list stars for the cast with the addition of The Station Agent's Peter Dinklage as the blackmailer. With the exception of Ewen Bremner whose attempt at posh English is jarringly unconvincing, the rest of the cast are on good form, even if Rupert Graves does look and sound more like Ricky Gervais with every performance. Special credit to Serenity's Alan Tudyk as the hapless recipient of the hallucinogenics, whose performance is a delight to watch.

This was never going to be a classic, but manages to hit enough of the right notes to be more entertaining than not - a perfectly good bit of light-hearted fun in a fine British tradition.