PROJEKT iVIEW : Death @ Funeral @ Laughing My Ass Off
iVIEW AUTHOR:
ridemghost (Sunnyvale, USA)
EMAIL:
ridemghost [at] yahoo.com
I’ve never laughed out so loud having watched a film maybe since`I saw Coen Brothers ‘Big Lebowski’ almost a decade back. American Driector Frank Oz weaves a clever tale having an ensemble of characters around a funeral. Its the events like wedding and funerals that bring out the best and the worst in human beings ( mostly the worst ). It starts with the coffin of the deceased father being delivered to the family of Daniel ( Mathew Macfadyen ) an aspiring novelist and his wife Jane ( Keely Haawes ) and the widow ( Jane Asher ). But its the wrong body they have delivered. This faux paus kicks off a series of crazy and hilarious incidents that mark the entire canvas of the funeral. It has a plethora of characters with own sets of issues and problems that converge on the scene for the service.
We had a joke amongst ourselves( friends ) that once the last of the guys had gotten married, we’d all come to meet each other only at the funerals. With each passing year I feel the joke is on us.
Daniel’s brother Robert ( Rupert Graves ) is a novelist who lives in a penthouse in Manhattan. He flies first class all the way from Manhattan to England but does’nt have money to cover the half cost of the funeral that he’s promised his bother. There is Simon( brilliantly played by Alan Tudyk ) scared, confused and reluctant suitor who’s tagged along with the family cousin Martha(Daisy Donovan) to meet her disapproving father (Peter Egan). Martha hands out a pill which she thinks is valium to Simon to calm his nerves. But this pill is infact LSD cum Ketamine concocted by her brother who we are told is a budding pharmacist( no pun intended). Welcome to the cuckoo clock!!!!!!!!!!!
Then there is a midget Peter(Peter Dinkler) with menacing looks who happens to know some shocking truth about the deceased. It will be a sacrilege to reveal the plot. The movie starts off quite grim but once the gags start they come at you with relentless intensity. It reaches a crescendo in the final act. You have to give all the credit to Dean Craig script for all the situations that tickles your funny bone. and also to Hollywoodian Frank Oz for setting it up England. It is funny mainly because of the typical English demeanor (stiff upper lip and all that).
How I wish someone would make a good comedy in hindi? The only one’s that come to mind are Sai Pranjpe’s Chashme Badoor, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Golmaal and to some extent Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Though I had watched Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro in 1986 in School and I had loved it back then but I dont know if I’d find it as funny if I watched it now. The sensibilities of a person chages with time ( for the better or worse, it is immaterial ). When you are young you prefer slapstick and are in different to subtle, but it gets reversed over the years.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
hmmmmm funeral is indeed a very good topic for films – black humor.
Ghost – i will see this film … and in exchange u better revisit Jaane bhi do yarron :-)
Another film that I’m reminded of is Cache 22 … which is a black comedy set against the military backdrop
After reading your review I think Rahul Rawail should have watched this film before making the crap called buddha mar gaya.
I watched this movie last Friday. It really is quite funny. I loved the characters – sab ke sab namoone hain !
I saw this movie yesterday amongst an audience comprising mostly above 40 kinds… only myself and two chicks were 20 somethings in the crowd… So I do agree with the author that this movie might be for the crowd with more salt than pepper in their hair….
But, honestly, I didn’t find this movie subtle, on more than one occasion it was downright gross and the consistent use of F-word didn’t help either. Its funny but its too predictable, the family secret can be guessed too easily, and made me remember Ritesh Deshmukh scenes. The oldie uncle talking about his gal in younger days, use of wrong pills, the family secret… is not at all innovative. This story can be thought of while sitting in a college canteen by say a group of friends….
I would label this more in the genre of slapstick types. I have seen british comedy on television and this doesn’t come anywhere close to that. Most of the times it seems that humor here was forced rather than being natural.
For me, a non-slapstick comedy would be something like Hitch… and among Indian movies, Golmaal (of course), Jaane Bhi do Yaaron (for its last scene, sheer genius !!!)… maybe Hera Pheri and DCH…
Agreed it’s not your typical British comedy per say and that at some points, it is predictable. I only knew the family secret because of the previews; the previews kinda gave it away. But nonetheless, it was rather enjoyable and a decent laugh.
See..murder by death..another grtty..