How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:119
Fresh:75
Rotten:44
Average Rating:5.9/10
Consensus: Death At A Funeral is a rousing British farce, with enough slapstick silliness to overcome its faults.
Runtime: 1 hr 31 mins
Genre: Comedies
US Box Office: $8,440,710
Synopsis: A dignified send-off for a loved one erupts into uproarious chaos when romance, jealousy, in-laws, hallucinogens, dark secrets, life-long yearnings and a spot of bold blackmail all collide in the... [More]
Starring: Matthew MacFadyen, Rupert Graves, Peter Dinklage, Alan Tudyk
Director: Frank Oz
A total misfire from director Frank Oz, whose endeavours to deliver black humour wobbles fatally. With its excellent British cast, it's not all bad, but the plot is hackneyed, the tone is wrong, and what aspires to be funny leaves us embarrassed
Top CriticClick to read the article
Top CriticStarts off as a sedate British comedy, until the drugs kick in.
Set among the perpetually polite and embarrassed British, the film is at least tolerable.
Like Altman's Gosford Park, Oz's film is an organism comprising intersecting oddballs...
Top CriticThe tension in Death at a Funeral is between good manners and good comedy, something [director] Oz exploits throughout. Humor has a decided British accent, given that it's all about making genteel people cringe.
Top CriticFull of tired, sitcom-level gags.
Death at a Funeral is flawed, but I'm willing to forgive a lot of flaws when a movie makes me laugh as much as this one.
For farce to work well, the plotting needs to be watertight, whereas here the sheer excess of characters fails entirely to cover up this film's flimsy underpinnings.
It's no classic, but it did prompt me to watch those great old Ealing Alec Guinness comedies again.
The film begins with a vaguely tired joke, but this just makes what follows that much more delicious.
Screenwriter Dean Craig and director Frank Oz are not at all shy about possibly offending midgets, the elderly or the dead. From a hilariously insipid rambling eulogy to a naked man on the roof, this funeral turns into a demented upper-class riot.
A rousing British farce filled with many antic moments and huge embarrassments.
Death builds slowly and inexorably to a comic explosion that's just too good -- too insanely, impossibly mortifying -- to spoil here.
Just when you think things can’t quite get any crazier, they do.
Describing the plot and characters doesn’t begin to convey the out-of-control energy the film radiates. You have to be there.
Oz goes back to the well and taps into British humor, which has been so influential over the years for him, going back to The Muppet Show" in the 70s
This is a comedy that favors mania over wit and requires a high tolerance for sh*&$. It didn't evoke more than the occasional smile from this viewer.
...this is the type of film where the deceased spills out of his coffin, people are splattered with feces and if one person can accidentally take a hallucinogen, three are funnier.
In the end, the all-out pandemonium wins us over, but only just.
December 06, 2009:
Trailer Bulletin: Death at a Funeral 
Chris Rock's "Death at a Funeral" remake is headed to theaters. Get an early look, thanks to the just-released trailer. More...
March 08, 2009:
Morgan and Lawrence Attend Rock's Death at a Funeral
Tracy Morgan and Martin Lawrence have signed up for Neil LaBute's "Death at a Funeral" remake, joining Chris Rock in the cast. More...
November 10, 2008:
Chris Rock Causes Another Death at a Funeral
Chris Rock has agreed to co-write and star in a remake of last year's Frank Oz-directed British comedy "Death at a Funeral." More...
August 16, 2007:
Critical Consensus: Superbad is Certified Fresh; The Invasion Crash-Lands
This week at the movies, we've got some McLovin (Superbad, starring Michael Cera and Jonah Hill), pod people (The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig), and... More...
Last week, Moviefone offered us their worst films of the 2000s. Now see their 40 best!
Tickets and more to win for the forthcoming Wes Anderson film
RSS Feeds
Comment
