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Average User Score: 8 (21 sources)

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jenicecream

-1

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This is the sort of comedy that I love. Anyone afraid that a British comedy will be too highbrow will be in for a shock. Some of the funniest parts are decidedly lowbrow, including more than one instance of bathroom humor and male nudity. Alan...
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This is the sort of comedy that I love. Anyone afraid that a British comedy will be too highbrow will be in for a shock. Some of the funniest parts are decidedly lowbrow, including more than one instance of bathroom humor and male nudity. Alan Tudyk (American, oddly enough) is a standout. His facial expressions are priceless.

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Posted aug 3, 2008 5:29 am pt

brandi1leigh

-1

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This dark comedy is a lot of fun. Although the plot takes some fairly predictable turns, you can't help but giggle at this Frank Oz offering. The humor isn't overly sophisticated (in fact there are some scenes that are the very definition of...
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This dark comedy is a lot of fun. Although the plot takes some fairly predictable turns, you can't help but giggle at this Frank Oz offering. The humor isn't overly sophisticated (in fact there are some scenes that are the very definition of bathroom humor); however, they are still funny.
My one complaint is the rather forced ending that's a little to sentimental to fit the rest of the movie. I didn't think the characters needed a grand revelation at the end, but that;s exactly what happens.
Overall: This is a delightful movie, definitely worth the price of admission.

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Posted aug 18, 2007 12:24 pm pt

• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  100
  The humor manages to be simultaneously sophisticated, supremely silly and very dark.

  by Ruthe Stein | Read Full Review »
• [+] Time
  
  90
  Insanely funny, if occasionally out-of-control, black farce.

  by Richard Schickel | Read Full Review »
• [+] USA Today
  
  88
  The lack of propriety and solemnity is precisely what makes this comic farce so uproariously funny.

  by Claudia Puig | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  75
  The movie is part farce (unplanned entrances and exits), part slapstick (misbehavior of corpses) and part just plain wacky eccentricity. I think the ideal way to see it would be to gather your most dour and disapproving relatives and treat them to a night at the cinema.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Daily News
  
  75
  It takes a while for Frank Oz's ensemble black comedy Death at a Funeral to hit its deliriously nutty stride. But when it does, the laughs don't stop until the movie, like the subject of its family get-together, has taken its last breath.

  by Jack Mathews | Read Full Review »
• [+] ReelViews
  
  75
  The film's climax is nothing short of hilarious. And Death at a Funeral doesn't discriminate when it comes to the type of humor it embraces it. Everything is in there, from physical hijinks to verbal repartee to naked man jokes to drugs and gross-out stuff.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  75
  Death at a Funeral is lethal farce, combining hints of "The Lavender Hill Mob," doses of Joe Orton and a smidgen of the Farrelly brothers' scatology in its mix.

  by Sid Smith | Read Full Review »
• [+] Christian Science Monitor
  
  75
  It has the requisite amount of knockabout silliness.

  by Peter Rainer | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Onion (A.V. Club)
  
  75
  Though it grows silly and sentimental, Funeral scores enough big laughs to make its shortcomings eminently forgivable.

  by Nathan Rabin | Read Full Review »
• [+] Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  75
  The mostly British ensemble can do this stuff in their sleep, but Macfadyen and Donovan and Graves, especially, work up the necessary antic angst and silliness.

  by Steven Rea | Read Full Review »
• [+] Baltimore Sun
  
  75
  The movie maintains its comical, rocky equilibrium as long as the screenwriter, Dean Craig, sticks to domestic disasters and a Monty Python parody of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

  by Michael Sragow | Read Full Review »
• [+] Charlotte Observer
  
  75
  This combination of tightly controlled farce and gross-out comedy works unexpectedly well, until the filmmakers lose their nerve at last and settle for cozy homilies. Still, four-fifths of a rarity is about twice as much as studios deliver nowadays.

  by Lawrence Toppman | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  75
  Although set in England with a predominantly British cast, Death at a Funeral is no stiff-upper-lipped comedy, but a lean, mean, and often crude, farce.

  by Bill White | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  70
  Shows us how funny farce can be -- even with the hokiest of premises -- in the hands of the British.

  by Desson Thomson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Variety
  
  70
  With a circus parade of mourning Brits and enough appalling circumstances to set proper Englishness back to the Dark Ages, Death at a Funeral pits decorum against sex, drugs and dysfunction.

  by John Anderson | Read Full Review »