DEATH AT A FUNERAL

Death at a Funeral stars Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan, Danny Glover, Regina Hall, Zoe Saldana, James Marsden, Luke Wilson, Peter Dinklage and Colombus Short. It is directed by Neil LaBute. Rated R. With a running time of 1 Hr. and 30 Mins. I hear that this is almost a shot for shot remake of the 2007 british Death at a Funeral. I have not seen that one though.

Death at a Funeral is about a man named Aaron (Rock) who has his fathers funeral at his house. His entire family comes and as you can imagine anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The family consists of the grieving mom (played by Loretta Devine), the crazy uncle (played by Danny Glover) and the more successful brother Ryan (played by Martin Lawernce).

The film has its funny moments but i feel that it should have used its talents of leading man Chris Rock a lot more than they did use him. He just plays the straight man in the film. One of the long running gags in the film is that James Marsden's character accidentally takes an acid pill (which he thought was valume) and silly high jinks ensue. Its funny at first but they rely on that joke so much in the film that it just becomes tired. Some good parts of the film were Tracy Morgan and Danny Glover. Whenever on screen I thought those two stole the movie. Peter Dinklage also tries to blackmail the family with the fathers long kept secret. Those scenes were pretty funny too. For a comedy though I felt that I did not laugh enough. I also thought Luke Wilson's role was unfunny and completely uneccessary to the story. I am going to give the film a mild recommendation because of Morgan, Glover and Dinklage. I say go see it if your super bored one day and you feel like having a few good laughs. Thats about it though.

C+