How To Die Laughing

Stop. Stop whatever it is that you’re doing right now. Put down the Cheetos, turn off your computer, and go see this movie.

Whether you’re harboring a hidden bit of Anglophilia or have a flaming tattoo of Ricky Gervais (pre-“Night At the Museum,” of course) warmly emblazoned on your chest – this film will have you whooping. (Seriously, people in the audience were whooping.)

Director Frank Oz’s delightfully uproarious comedy of errors, “Death at a Funeral” opens as a melancholy Daniel (Matthew McFayden), alongside wife Jane (Keeley Hawes), hovers over his newly deceased father’s casket. As the undertaker opens the casket, Daniel explains that this is not his father – they seem to have grabbed the wrong box.

For Daniel, the central cog in the wheel that spins over the next hour and a half, this is just the beginning of a very long day.

Nagged by his loving wife, perturbed by his aunts and uncles, and tortured by the shadow of his accomplished-novelist brother Robert (Rupert Graves), Daniel is the passive aggressive scapegoat and reluctant hero of the film.

However, if the movie was to be stolen from him – it would be by Simon (Alan Tudyk) – the fiancé of Daniel’s cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan). After Martha gives Simon what she thinks is valium (but is actually a cocktail of drugs, including acid) Simon’s actions become completely unpredictable. Meanwhile Martha is being hunted by on-the-prowl funeral crasher Justin (Ewen Bremner), and is coming under fire from her father (who looks and acts like a sort of Gene Hackman meets Bill O’Reilly) for her poor choice of fiancé.

With numerous story lines running in parallel, Director Oz deftly switches from line to line – and when the story lines happen to intersect, it’s pure comedic paydirt. Like a slapstick-infused version of Britain’s “The Office” – Oz has taken oddly endowed characters and thrown them into a seemingly normal situation, a funeral. Add a script that is very talky, British, and heavily peppered with the F-word, throw in a handful of drugs masquerading as valium and a homosexual midget – and the result is genius.

While I cannot properly describe all of the goings on of the film, I will say that “Death at a Funeral” is (and this is not a phrase I throw around lightly) one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.

Aren’t you glad I sent you to see it right now?