Martin Scorsese remade Infernal Affairs four years later. Gore Verbinksi took the same amount of time to remake The Ring. This year we will see Matt Reeves turn around Let The Right One In just two years later. David Fincher is currently planning his The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo remake, a film released just this month in the U.S. With a world made up of so many different languages and cultures, it’s become common knowledge that a praised foreign film will eventually see its way through Hollywood in some form.
And so it is with Death at a Funeral; a film not only remade in the same language, but aside from a few quips here and there, has the same exact narrative structure down to every comedic beat. If you’ve seen Frank Oz‘s 2007 Brit original there is nothing new here. If you haven’t, this is an mildly entertaining comedy thanks to an impressive cast and the absurdity of the original story.
Chris Rock plays it straight as the lead, which is a bit uncomfortable at first. Trying to connect with someone who is known for being so ridiculous doesn’t work right off the bat. It is the day of his father’s funeral as his brother, a successful writer from NYC, played by Martin Lawrence, flies in. Lawrence, like Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover, James Marsden, Columbus Short, Keith David and even Luke Wilson, are all fun to watch and able to carry out the comedic beats with relative ease. Peter Dinklage, the standout here, reprises his exact same role from the 2007 film. Zoe Saldana is one of the few players whose dramatic arc is the most realized and one of the exemplary aspects in an otherwise dramatically stale film.
Writer/Director Neil LaBute showed some recent promise with Lakeview Terrace, an underrated film that never got a fair exposure due to its ridiculous trailers. All that has gone to the wayside here, as he adds nothing new to this re-do. Aside from some gorgeous lighting design, the only thing he should be recognized for is being able to craft the same story again and get away fairly clean thanks to strong casting. The camerawork is uninspired and the slim messages of familial relationships are so undeveloped that when it comes time to get serious the film falls flat.
It’s difficult to fairly judge the comedy when nothing is done differently and one is able to predict what will happen at every moment. I still laughed quite a bit, mostly due to my mind revisiting the original as the next big gag would occur. Surprisingly, writer Dean Craig‘s new updates tend to hinder the film. New jokes about Twitter and Amy Winehouse are so forced and obvious it’s painful to endure. The best thing that can be said is that the overly absurd moments are intact and done just as well.
With LaBute proving he can take a fascinating look at race and family in his last film, it’s crushing that he inspires for absolutely nothing with this new update. If you are simply looking for a lightweight comedy and have never heard of Oz’s version before then you enjoy it. For everyone else, this is just a waste of time.
4 out of 10