Death at a Funeral

From director Frank Oz comes the story of a family that puts the F U in funeral. So goes the tagline of the film. May we add, it also puts comedy back in funeral and British comedy back in business, drawing inevitable comparisons with Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Funerals are dire business, borrowing as much on the grief of close ones as the solemnity of near strangers. What if you throw in the mix an acerbic wheelchair-confined uncle, a man high on accidental drugs, another pining for a one-night stand, a fianceacute;e looking to escape an overbearing mother-in-law, one son dutiful but acutely aware of the cost of the funeral, the other famous author but too detached to have time for emotions, and a strange midget carrying an unmentionable secret?

These are all characters we have seen or read about before, but Oz gets his talented ensemble to come together as a genuinely dysfunctional family. The aunts, nieces, cousins, brothers, sisters, mothers, in-laws, they are all there. Plus a bottle of valium that keeps turning up at all the crucial moments. The film shows that all families have their secrets, but that it8217;s not this that binds them. Incredible as it may seem at times, especially at those funerals, weddings or big Sunday dinners, it is love.