Death at a Funeral (2007)

He's more than just the voice and wizard behind Yoda. Frank Oz is also a director, and after seeing Death at a Funeral, I'm going to have to look at more of his canon beyond Muppet-like projects of his.

Death at a Funeral is a testament to Murphy's Law in 35 mm. Anything that can go wrong does - in typically British fashion. I'll say this for British comedy: they're willing to push the envelope much farther than Americans. Though Americans are well-renowned for their crudeness in comedy, there's something classically British in the approach to poking fun at homosexuality, mescaline overdoses, and the bowel practices of Uncle Alfie. Heck, the funniest line of the film takes a jab at the very delicate subject of dwarfism: when told that no one will notice that Peter, a dwarf who has a nasty secret about dear departed Dad, isn't at the funeral any more, one funeralgoer exclaims angrily, "Didn't notice him? He's four f--king feet tall!"

Yes, that's Matthew Macfadyen, Mr. Darcy himself, as Daniel, the bereaved son who's balancing the loss of his father with a supremely dysfunctional family. Eat your heart out, Bluths. His brother is a famous writer, his mother is determined to be miserable, his cousin Martha has brought her accidentally-drugged fiance Simon, and Justin thinks he still has a shot with Martha. And that's all in the first ten minutes. From the moment Daniel opens the coffin and realizes the funeral home has given him the wrong body to the closing of the film, I laughed until I cried.

A lot is to be said for the directing and editing of the comedy, but the acting is what holds it together. Maybe it's just something about British accents that make even the dumbest jokes funnier. (Monty Python, anyone?) The fact is, each of these figures are delightfully over the top but remain believable within the realm of the movie. Who's to say whether Simon's drug-induced antics are scientifically plausible? The characters in the film all buy it; so do we.

Clocking in at 90 minutes, I have to say this is the funniest film I've seen in 2008 thus far. Sorry, Dan in Real Life, but the punchlines in Death at a Funeral killed. (ba-dum-chh)