Death At A Funeral (15) *

Jun 6 2010 by Graham Young, Sunday Mercury

Cast: Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan, Luke Wilson, Zoë Saldana, Danny Glover, Peter Dinklage.

Plot: A family is in mourning for the death of its patriarch. Son Aaron (Rock) still lives at home so that is where the funeral will be. Except the wrong body gets delivered. When the right one finally arrives, a mysterious dwarf called Frank (Dinklage) comes too. One of the few white faces in the nearly all-black cast, nobody seems to know who he is or what he is doing there.

Good points: Since this is a pointless remake of the very British farce directed by Hereford-born Frank Oz in 2007, the sole attraction for many will be the all-star cast. The best joke remains a good joke.

Bad points: It’s two minutes longer than the original and the 92 minutes seem to last twice as long. Nobody seems to care a fig there has been a death in family. One assumes the family would display more real emotion if a neighbour’s cat had been run over. Watching a capable star like Danny Glover being reduced to trapping a man’s hand beneath his bottom while sitting on the toilet with inevitable results is one of the low points of modern cinema. Has he run out of Orange phone ads to make?

Should I see it? If you didn’t see the original but now fancy a remake that’s pedestrian, painful and puerile then this will be your perfect picture.

GRAHAM YOUNG