Death at a Funeral: Critic Reviews

Working with a broad script by Dean Craig, director Frank Oz goes for American-style physicality, marching his players around a country house in which a toilet, alas, plays a big part.

Death at a Funeral stands apart from other movies with rude humor because its characters are determined to keep a stiff upper lip no matter what.

Scientists believe that black holes can slow down the progress of time. A similar effect can be felt by viewers of this damp squib of a farce as it grinds on from one lame set-up to the next.

Death at a Funeral may be the funniest movie ever set in such a deadly serious setting.

Death at a Funeral shows us how funny farce can be -- even with the hokiest of premises -- in the hands of the British.

Death builds slowly and inexorably to a comic explosion that's just too good -- too insanely, impossibly mortifying -- to spoil here.

Death at a Funeral never even approaches the best of Oz's oeuvre.

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.

'Wrong' is the operative word with Death at a Funeral, which in the first very funny 30 minutes shows its hand and then, unfortunately, continues to wave that hand frantically for the next hour.

No, there aren't a lot of surprise giggles in it. But at this Funeral, the pleasure is in seeing those giggles coming.

Death at a Funeral is a dark British farce whose conventionality should not be held against it -- old-fashioned farces are murder to bring off.

Death at a Funeral finds its comedy in the peculiar human trait of being most tempted to laugh when we're absolutely not supposed to.

It's sillier but funnier than Knocked Up, the summer's other notable comedy.

A standard but serviceable vulgar farce.

A well-crafted British farce -- albeit one with an American director, Frank Oz, working the controls - this throwback to the haughty high jinks of vintage Ealing comedies begins with an obvious, but effective, gag.

Even at a brisk 90 minutes, though, the show begins to feel like a memorial that has dragged on too long. Comedy plus bad timing equals disappointment.

An old-fashioned English farce with enough gross-out humor to rival the dumb and dumberest of American movies, but also enough smarts to make your pleasure guilt-free.

The tension in Death at a Funeral is between good manners and good comedy, something [director] Oz exploits throughout. Humor has a decided British accent, given that it's all about making genteel people cringe.

If, like me, you ever thought the supply of British comic talent was unlimited, here's surprisingly convincing evidence to the contrary.

No, there aren't a lot of surprise giggles in it. But at this Funeral, the pleasure is in seeing those giggles coming.

Death at a Funeral might have been made in the 1960s, not to be released until well past its stale date.

It's no classic, but it did prompt me to watch those great old Ealing Alec Guinness comedies again.

Weighing in at a brisk 90 minutes, the picture does have the advantage of brevity, and on screen no less than off, there's much to be said for a quick send-off.

Death at a Funeral is flawed, but I'm willing to forgive a lot of flaws when a movie makes me laugh as much as this one.

This topsy-turvy funeral produces a number of smiles, giggles, pleasant guffaws and several solid, sustained laughs. Not a bad batting average as comedies go.