Death at a Funeral

Frank Oz gleefully skewers the middle class mores of an Agatha Christie-like setting with this gloriously daft black comedy from first-time writer Dean Craig. Gathered together for the funeral of a well-to-do patriarch with one or two skeletons knocking around his closet, a large and dysfunctional family (is there any other kind?) find their upper lips becoming markedly unstiffened as restrained decorum gives way to utter mayhem. The farcical plot machinations centre round a glumly staid Matthew Macfadyen, striving desperately to maintain his sanity amid the escalating chaos. The malevolent intentions of a mysterious dwarf, some unwitting ingestion of hallucinogens by a nervous lawyer, and the subsequent discovery of the aforementioned skeletons, all combine to snowball the initial chuckles into riotous, old-fashioned slapstick comedy. Like an outrageously twisted episode of Fawlty Towers, everything that could go wrong does go wrong, and then some. The cast are great, mostly Brit-com stalwarts doing what they do best, but Yank Alan Tudyk is absolutely terrific: spending much of the movie resplendent in naked delirium, he manages to be both effortlessly hilarious and genuinely touching. While the more scatological moments seem unnecessary, and the attempts at establishing back-story never quite convince, it's still a rambunctious, loony joy, and the funniest film I've seen this year. [Laura Smith]