Brit mourners take it on the stiff upper lip
"Death at a Funeral"
3 stars
out of four
Opens today
Starring As
Matthew Macfadyen Daniel
Peter Dinklage Peter
Alan Tudyk Simon
Keeley Hawes Jane
Rupert Graves Robert
Written by Dean Craig. Produced by Diana Phillips, Share Stallings, Laurence Malkin and Sidney Kimmel. Directed by Frank Oz. An MGM release. Rated R (language, drug use). Running time: 90 minutes.
"Death at a Funeral" -- a British comedy of manners directed by Yoda's alter ego, Frank Oz -- starts out as slow and sure as a locomotive pulling a freight train.
It takes awhile for the movie to gather speed, and when it finally achieves cruising velocity, all the waiting-around-for-something-to-happen time starts to pay off.
Nothing sets the stage for humorous British embarrassment better than a solemn funeral.
The deceased is the father of Daniel, a quietly indecisive Brit played by "Pride & Prejudice" star Matthew Macfadyen with an upper lip so stiff, it's frozen.
Daniel keeps promising his patient wife Jane (Keeley Hawes) that they'll move out of his mum's house soon. But he really wants to finish the never-finished novel he's never working on.
We soon find out why as family members gather for the funeral, among them Daniel's brother Robert (Rupert Graves), a hugely successful novelist who never passes up the chance to flaunt his achievements.
Other relatives and friends start showing up, among them Daniel's cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan), her veddy, veddy proper fiance Simon (Alan Tudyk), and Martha's recreational druggie brother Troy (Kris Marshall).
The funereal ambience starts to dissipate after Troy whips up a powerful pharmaceutical concoction that Simon accidentally ingests, turning him into a nutty-bird nudist who takes to climbing on the roof in the buff.
But the film's coupe de grace of embarrassing circumstance doesn't occur until the arrival of a mysterious small man named Peter (Peter Dinklage, attempting to redeem himself from participating in the super woofer "Underdog").
Peter's connection to Daniel's father remains oblique, at least until a semi-shocking, comic revelation hits Daniel between the eyes in his dad's den. The specifics won't be discussed here, despite that this plot twist has already been compromised by spoiler TV commercials and theatrical trailers.
Not all the humor in "Death at a Funeral" stems from milking restrained laughs from embarrassed, restrained Brits.
Director Oz, born in England before he moved to the U.S., tosses in some old-fashioned American vulgarity. Daniel's aged Uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan), confined to a wheelchair, latches onto a toilet bowl for a marathon elimination tournament that seeks to out-gross Jeff Daniels' fecal dumpage in "Dumb and Dumber."
For the record, he fails.
The last time Oz sat in a director's chair, we got the dismal remake of "The Stepford Wives." Here, "Death" pumps life back into his directorial career.