Chris Rock's 'Death at a Funeral' True to the Britcom Version, Save a Jet Magazine Reference

A A A Comments (1) By Melissa Anderson Thursday, Apr 15 2010

It doesn’t take much to improve the first Death at a Funeral, the flat Frank Oz–directed Britcom of 2007; a few tossed-off references to Jetand sickle cell anemia will do it. Though the plot of Dean Craig’s original script remains almost entirely intact (he receives the sole writer’s credit), the tweaks by star-producer Chris Rock — who replaces the pallid ninnies of London with a mostly African-American extended clan gathered in Pasadena to say goodbye to a deceased patriarch — yield some particularly sharp specifics.

Last time Peter Dinklage was tied up by a couple men, they spoke with British accents.

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Rock plays elder son Aaron, whose successful-writer younger brother, Ryan (Martin Lawrence), has made his riches off books titled Mama’s Secret, Black Hurt, and Rhonda’s Tiny Box. Eulogizing Dad before learning about his life on the “waaaaay down-low” (Peter Dinklage reprises his role as the extorting secret boyfriend), Aaron refers to his father’s “love of Golden Girls, especially when it went into syndication.”

But Rock’s interventions can’t compensate for excessive fealty to dumb gags involving watery poop and designer hallucinogens. Some cast members bring welcome controlled mania: Tracy Morgan, as a hypochondriacal friend of the family, further hones his logorrheic outbursts. Others, like Luke Wilson, as a scorned suitor of Zoe Saldana, are such null presences that they should have been in the original.

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Ace 04/16/2010 3:03:00 AM

It's obvious you're just an old, hateful, spiteful, wrinkly bitch. I would say why would waste your community college degree earning time on writing anything on the movie, since you only watched it to be spiteful, but the question segues the answer immediately. So, I guess you go to movies, upset that you left your multiple of cats without water, leave, write crappy 'reviews' and then VOILA! Someone suddenly had the credentials to call something pointless. I just have to say, what was the point of this and the 'Death at a Funeral' tripe, you call an article? I am dying to know since, I plan on study journalism. I understand everyone with an asshole has the right to their own opinion, but on every single movie you review, you just sound like an old bitter bitch who misses the mild excitement of 'Murder She Wrote' and wants every movie to be a 'Steel Magnolia'. And it's obvious you go to movies that you HATE on purpose. Do something useful in you ancient, octogenarian life and go watch a movie you THINK you'll like and review. Because, guess what? I hate seafood. I'm not going to to Red Lobster, eat a crab salad and go online about how the lobster sucks.