Death at a Funeral

I was laughing so much, I forgot it was a Martin Lawrence movie!

Chris Rock stars as Aaron - a put upon husband, frustrated novelist and overlooked son trying to bring some dignity to his father's funeral. Of course (because this is a comedy), throughout the day, all sorts of secrets are revealed and shenanigans ensue. It's a funeral unlike any you have ever seen before (unless you saw the original version of Death at a Funeral when it came out 3 years ago)

To the producers' credit, you get to watch a comedy All-Star team at work. Rock and Lawrence play siblings engaged in a rivalry that has been battled since youth. Tracy Morgan is the relative who seems to have everything bad happen to him as he takes care of cranky Uncle Russell (Danny Glover). Zoe Saldana (Miss Avatar live and in the flesh this time, thankfully) is all worried what her father (Ron Glass) and the rest of the family will think of her fiancée (James Marsden).

And, in the biggest controversy you already know from the commercials, Peter Dinklage is a man who shows up at the funeral to reveal the close relationship he had with the deceased, which is bound to shock everyone.

Writer Dean Craig and director Neil LaBute get Death at a Funeral off to a funny start, and each subplot promises some hilarious moments, but the movie runs out of steam as each one of those stories desperately seeks some conclusions. After a while, it just feels like the same jokes recycled over and over again, instead of watching each story evolve with new twists and turns to keep the laughter coming.

Yet, the audience can enjoy great performances from individual actors. Marsden steals the show as the fiancée who starts to act funny when he takes a pill to calm his nerves. While the act, like the rest of the movie, gets old and unoriginal after a while, Marsden continues to do everything possible to make it funny without feeling forced and phony. He comes off as an actor gleeful to be playing the role, and that feeling is infectious as you hope to see more and more of his antics.

Also, you can't forget Morgan, who gets to have the most outrageous lines of dialogue shooting out of his mouth like a Gatling gun of giggles. Sadly, he gets saddled with the most heinous of potty jokes in the movie, leading to a series of disgusting twists that made me feel like I wanted to walk out of the theater, but Morgan is great up until then. I wish LaBlute and Craig allowed Morgan to continue to be funny without resorting to such desperate measures (for the record, it also got the biggest laughs from the crowd who saw the movie with me).

Unfortunately, Rock and Lawrence almost aren't needed. The rivalry between the two is very thin, and each one seems to lack their normal energy and excitability, especially when compared to everyone else in the cast, and LaBlute and Craig try to inject some drama towards the end, which is completely out of place.

Death at a Funeral is worth it for the first half of the movie, and passable for the second.

Death at a Funeral is rated R for language, drug content and some sexual humor.