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Funerals can be funny. Rahul Rawail tried to prove it last year in
"Buddha Mar Gaya" where Anupam Kher played the tycoon's corpse
with secrets popping out of the coffin. The movie crashed at the box
office.
I can't decide who's more expressive as a corpse, Anupam in Rawail's
failed farce or the British gentleman who played the dead patriarch
of a British royal family in the movie.
It's hard not to smile and even chuckle at the excesses of a funeral
crowd who don't seem to get it right. The inter-relations are formed
quickly and that's saying a lot in a film that has approximately three
dozen characters in various postures of mourning and panting.
There's some puffing involving cigarettes and other unmentionable objects.
Ten minutes into the comedy, and you're hooked to hectic hilarity as
characters drive into leafy lanes of a British town to attend the funeral.
Frank Oz's character oozes irreverence and iconoclasm without seeming
to. They're nutty and cracked, goofy and ribald.
There's a man high on Valium romping naked on the roof of the mourners'
residence. There's a dwarf claiming with photographic evidence to be
the dead tycoon's secret gay lover.
There's a vain novelist from New York who scorns his Britain-based
brother for being a home bird. There're immediate instigations and profound
provocations jostling for space.
Titters are tucked away in the farcical folds of this done-to-death-comedy
that tells you it's okay to laugh in the face of death and old age.
Finally, as all you've to show for it is an inert figure in a coffin
and a house full of self-seeking hyper-selfish relatives orchestrated
by a priest who has another appointment around the "coroner".
The film features a sparkling array of acting talent. Watch out for
Peter Dinklage, who seems saddled with shit in more ways than one. And
Alan Tudyk, romping naked among mourners preserves a core of dignity
in the ludicrous.
That, I think, is the secret of this comedy's success. "Death
At Funeral" laughs at the living rather than the dead. It tells
us that we don't need to fear mortality but the danger of taking life
a tad too seriously.
