Death at a Funeral

Everything that possibly can go wrong will go wrong.

Bring on the airing of grievances.

Take a walk in the park, take a Valium pill.

Nothing brings a family closer together than a little blackmail.

A father has died and a funeral has been arranged. Friends and family are scheduled to arrive. Personal motivations have piqued ambitious interests. The reverend hopes to depart at 3 o'clock sharp.

Hallucinogenic drugs have accidentally been introduced. An affair has been brought to light. An appropriate time to express one's romantic longings is passing by. Solutions are expediently distilled.

Frank Oz's Death at a Funeral lightly presents intergenerational tensions, sibling rivalries, progressive structures, and scatological sentiments. Historical details are used sparingly to support present actions. The principle subject lies motionless and rarely becomes the object of analysis. Anxiety and awkwardness brazenly duel as an afternoon's solemnity is feverishly deconstructed.

Indirectly suggesting that without the influence of one man's protective guise a family's prosperity is in pedantic jeopardy, thereby functioning as a formulaic exemplar of transition, Death at a Funeral symbolically externalizes emotions such as grief and gives them plenty of room to transmute. Consistently juxtaposing the petty and the poignant while delegating comedic insight with a sober intensity, it will certainly cause you to shake your head more than once as you helplessly and cheerfully ask the question, "why?"