What’s so funny?: Chris Rock, Regina Hall and Martin Lawrence

Three years ago, the American Frank Oz directed an almost-all-British cast in a movie called Death at a Funeral. Now the American Neil LaBute has directed an almost-all-African-American cast in a remake. The difference is just barely more than skin deep.

The story, as stories go, is simple: At a patriarch’s funeral, his assembled kinsmen, including his widow and two sons, learn that he had conducted a secret gay affair with a dwarf. This would be hard enough for an upscale British clan to accept, but to an upscale African-American family, it means Dad was on the down low — or, as one family member quips, “Way down low.”

In both instances, mayhem ensues, and it’s slightly funnier when spoken in black English rather than the Queen’s. (There’s a noticeable comic disparity between Henry Higgins’ “damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn,” and Tracy Morgan’s “daaamn!”) LaBute directs a bit more briskly than did Oz, whose movies have always been visually stiff. And to tie the two versions together, Peter Dinklage returns in the role of the paramour with palimony and blackmail on his homosexual agenda.

In this version, sons Aaron and Ryan are played by Chris Rock, as the elder (by nine months), and Martin Lawrence, as the younger, a famous novelist who’s squandered his riches, apparently on young women. (Cue the R. Kelly joke.) Aaron and his wife live with his mother (Loretta Devine), but they want to buy a house and, at long last, have a child. As the funeral service is about to begin, his wife is ovulating and, she informs him, not wearing any panties.

Then the guests begin to arrive. There’s lovely cousin Elaine (Zoe Saldana) and her goofy-sweet fiancé, Oscar (James Marsden), whom her father (Ron Glass) hates, but not because he’s white. (He wants her to marry his white stockbroker, played by Luke Wilson.) Family friend Norman (Morgan) has a big mouth, cranky old Uncle Russell (Danny Glover) has no control over his bowels, and Elaine’s brother, a pharmacology student, has manufactured some super-potent acid that a nervous Oscar ingests, causing Elaine’s dad to hate Oscar even more when he gets super-stoned — and gets naked on the roof. 

LaBute, the brutalist playwright/filmmaker behind Your Friends and Neighbors and The Shape of Things, is not conventionally funny, and his kind of black humor is not this kind of black humor. But Death at a Funeral is still a flawed piece of material: The writer, Dean Craig, indulges broad farce when the smarter story would be the one where Dad, still alive, brings his diminutive lover home to meet the kinfolk. 

In fact, when Aaron finally gives his eulogy, he portrays his father as a man without prejudice who knew people were imperfect and who accepted them as they were. It’s a lovely sentiment, but much too treacly coming moments after Norman wonders whether people can still smell Uncle Russell’s shit on his face and shirt. 

As I watched Death at a Funeral, I tried to discern whether re-visioning this story as African American made a difference. The best I can conclude is that it didn’t, which is probably a good thing. Race gets mentioned only once in the dialogue, and the person who brings it up gets rebuked for doing so. There’s some honest homophobia that fades away in the end, and the American setting loosens things up a bit, but probably no more so than if the cast had been all white. Morgan is especially funny as the kinetic motor-mouth, and Marsden executes some elastic physical comedy. One senses that the film’s comic actors ad-libbed its funnier, hipper lines.

Still, the highest recommendation I can give this Death at a Funeral is to say that a preview audience howled at much of the movie’s raucous humor, far more so than people did at the British version. Does this mean that Americans have a baser sense of humor, or that the British aren’t good at farce? I’ll get back to you on that in a few years, when James Cameron makes the Asian-American version, starring Jackie Chan and Margaret Cho.

This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2010.

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One reply on “Death at a Funeral”

  1. Mr. Kloman, I found your review to be less informative and more of an exposure of your obvious issues with the “change of race” that this remake decided to go with. Before you roll your eyes, let me explain.

    For a movie that, as you mentioned, only mentions race one time, your review chooses to bring race up eleven times, and in troubling ways. Your apparent preoccupation with the fact that this is a remake with a black cast makes this an uncomfortable read.

    I don’t even want to think about your intentions with the first graph and the last sentence, “The difference is barely skin deep.” Really? This is how you choose to begin to discuss a piece of novel American entertainment for folks to have a laugh on a weekend? This blatant, odd jab at race is amazingly transparent and troubling for me given the movie has no preoccupation with race. It’s a non factor in the movie, but it’s the underpinning of your review.

    First, black people speak “English”, not “black English”. The proper term is the “black slang” used in the movie. The slang is no different than the slang of white guys in the North Hills saying “fuckin right, dude”. But for you to invent this concept of black English is just ridiculous.

    The R.Kelly joke was unnecessary.

    Why do you care that James Marsden’s character is white (you mentioned that in the review), when the movie never even mentions anyone had an issue with his race. It was a non story in the movie. Then you throw in “white stockbroker” as if again, anyone in the movie ever even cared. African Americans have had white family members and white people dating their family members long enough to get past dwelling on it before you were born. You took half of a long graph to dwell on it for no apparent reason. The story was she was dating a new guy, and the old guy-who was her father’s favorite-was at the wedding. NO ONE BUT YOU CARED that the guys were white. It happens in real life, but apparently not in your social circle.

    Finally, you punctuate your obsession with a unnecessary joke about James Cameron doing a remake with two prominent Asian actors. Harry, this is a movie for Americans. A simple comedy to get people to laugh. They happened to have believed that in America, maybe, we can do a remake with an all black cast and it will be funnier than dry ass English humor, which is an acquired taste.

    For you to write 8 graphs before mentioning the fact that the audience was “howling” at the comedy in this film is irresponsible. This movie is hilarious. To “blacken up” the film when the film makes no attempt to be “black” (the people just want to be themselves), is to me blatant obsession with the composition of the actors in this film. You even mentioned that you were trying to discern if a white or black cast would have made a difference. Who the fuck cares, Harry? The director LaBute did not hold a press conference and say, “We want to try something incredible here and make this film all black cast. It’s ground breaking and we want you to see how amazing changing the racial component is.”

    You write as if most Americans even know there is an English version. They don’t. It was just a movie to them. Your pondering of this subject would be more relevant if this was an all-black remake of something deeply familiar to Americans like, “American Pie”.

    A review is not your chance to write an essay on the differences and merits of English/American and black/white humor. It’s a fucking comedy movie. There’s no stage. There’s no cheese and crackers. This is not broadway. Was the comedy funny, Harry? That’s what I wanted to know from a film critic. You slip it in at the end when its the most important thing to share with a reader. But first, you had to write your essay.

    I’ll repeat, 11 mentions of race in your review for a movie that mentions it once. Any they say blacks are sensitive to race. Would you review Elvis’ music and harp on the fact that most of his songs were written by blacks and stolen by record companies? You know the answer to that question. A response would be wonderful. – Don

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