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2010's Death at a Funeral is the American remake of the long-forgotten, years-old 2007 movie of the same name. That's correct - by the time this remake entered multiplexes, barely three years had elapsed since Frank Oz's British original hit cinemas and found cult success. The twist (if it can be called as such) is that this American version features a primarily African-American cast, who were given the almost exact same script as the 2007 picture to act out. However, one word springs to mind while describing this American version: why? Why remake a three-year-old British film (which was in English) and redo the exact same gags? It might work for those unfamiliar with the original, but even that is debatable.
The plot, as with the original film, concerns the funeral of a family patriarch which is being held in his large home by request. Eldest son Aaron (Rock) has taken care of all the arrangements, but becomes faced with all the bills and domestic headaches that come with a family gathering. Added to this, Aaron lives in the shadow of his successful brother and best-selling author Ryan (Lawrence). If this isn't bad enough, Aaron's wife Michelle (Hall) wants to conceive a child, mother Cynthia (Devine) is overwhelmed by grief, and a cavalcade of family acquaintances (including Saldana, Glover, Morgan, Marsden, Glass, and many others) have arrived with their own problems to disrupt what was intended to be a peaceful celebration of life. Also spoiling the funeral is a mysterious dwarf named Frank (Dinklage, reprising his role from the 2007 original) who has plans to blackmail Aaron.
For this Death at a Funeral remake, the biggest mistake was to retain Dean Craig's original screenplay. Aside from a few groan-worthy pop culture references and the occasional new or slightly altered line, this version is practically a gag-for-gag, word-for-word replication of the 2007 film. In order to work, this American version needed the very thing that Craig's sturdy script was unable to provide: a new voice. The best remakes in history are able to offer a fresh take on a premise as opposed to a word-for-word recreation of somebody else's work. The Departed, Ocean's Eleven and Peter Jackson's King Kong are all examples of good remakes. 2010's Death at a Funeral, however, is just flat and useless. The original UK version was a solid, understated black comedy, but when Americanised by an inadequate cast & crew, Death at a Funeral feels weak and forced. The laugh lines seem like precisely that: laugh lines. In a dark comedy like this, it's less amusing if the actor is in on the joke.
Furthermore, Death at a Funeral embodies everything that's wrong with Americanising a movie. The 2007 original was hardly highbrow, but it was not stupid, nor did it assume its audience would be. But the team behind this remake clearly assumed that its audience would be complete morons who can't understand a joke unless the punchline is over-exaggerated, and who cannot laugh at physical humour unless it's overplayed. See, the film wastes time hammering home points that need not be hammered home. At the beginning, for instance, the undertakers deliver the wrong coffin to the family home. In the 2007 original, the joke is low-key and brisk. In this remake, the joke is dragged out, and we see that the man in the coffin is actually an Asian, which underlines the notion that this could not possibly be part of an African-American family. Thus, whereas the British film was excellently nuanced in the acting department and relied on understated wit to generate laughter, 2010's Death at a Funeral is notably louder and stupider.
Chris Rock (The Longest Yard) is usually a supremely talented comedian and a supremely likeable presence, but in portraying Aaron he was restricted to playing the level-headed protagonist, and thus seems miscast. Who would want Rock to play the straight man, anyway? Alongside him, there are a few decent performances, most notably from Zoe Saldana, James Marsden and Ron Glass. The standout in the cast is Danny Glover who's a hoot as the misanthropic, wheelchair-bound Uncle Russell. One of the best lines in the movie is of Glover remarking "I'm too old for this shit"; referencing his Lethal Weapon years. If he replaced the word "old" with "good", he'd be a lot closer to the mark.
To its credit, the film moves forward amiably enough - it's never truly dull thanks to an unexpected energy, but never is the movie hilarious or genuinely good either. Death at a Funeral provides three or four scattered laughs, but not nearly the same quantity or quality of its predecessor, which is strange considering the almost identical screenplay. Additionally, aside from the British original, 2010's Death at a Funeral is strangely reminiscent of another film: Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of Psycho. In both instances, talented people were squandering their talents and energies on a needlessly restricted project, denying them the opportunity to offer a completely fresh take on another movie.
4.2/10
