Movie - Death at a Funeral

After last week’s dire The Bad Lieutenant, a comedy, no matter how un-promising the title is definitely in order.I didn’t know much about this film other than it’s about the hilarity that ensues at a funeral.I was pleasantly surprised at the all star comedy cast with Luke Wilson an unexpected bonus. However you’d expect good things when you see these names on the rolling credits list; Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Martin Lawrence and Danny Glover added to other comforting, familiar faces.The film opens funny and stays funny. With such a huge cast of characters the story weaves in and out of their lives adding a joke or one-liner to every scene.This isn’t a teen, male or romantic comedy. It’s a straight forward comedy with something for everyone.The niece of the deceased arrives with her boyfriend, fiancé actually, but she is yet to tell her overpowering father whilst the situation is made a whole lot worse by her giving her already nervous beau a strong ecstasy tablet rather than the valium she thought it was.The same thing happens later when a dark stranger appears at the funeral who admits to some deep secrets about his ‘special relationship’ with his father to the son, Aaron (Chris Rock – who actually plays a straight role here). More Valium/E is required to handle this situation as Aaron tries hard to keep the family together at his father’s funeral and is in no mood to be blackmailed. He’s also too keen on the constant references to his successful, writer, younger brother (Martin Lawrence) particularly from his mother.Danny Glover is brilliant as the old, dithering but sharp, wheel chair, bound uncle transported by friend of the family (Tracy Morgan) and his friend (Luke Wilson) who happens to have a thing for the soon to be married niece.You get the picture but there’s a lot more where that came from and the writers must have had enjoyed putting all this into one film.It was hard to research the cast list for this as apparently a version of this film came out just a couple of years ago but I cannot imagine it being as funny.Terrific.    8/10        Smile Factor 10/10[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neCY4hh1wJg&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]