I admit that I did not recognize one actor in this film before renting it. I saw the review on a movie show and I was intrigued by a movie which was a comedy based entirely on a funeral. I have heard of the director FranK Oz so I gave it a go. That plus the movie starts with the mortuary delivering the wrong body to the mansion for the funeral. Big ugly coffins, wrong pale bodies and incompetentfuneral directors get my vote everytime.
The entire move is shot on the grounds of a dearly depared gent who had nice English estate, and afew tantalizing boudoir secrets. With two sons squabbling over who would pay for the funeral and a mourner who took some hallucinoginic pills thinking they were valium, the movie had a great start. He had to be removed when he screamed that there were people moving in the coffin. Later in the movie he sat naked on he roof refusing to come down once he realized that he had been fed the wrong pills. The funeral is held in three acts as it stops and starts like an AMC Gremlin with a defective motor.
It would be a real shame to give the whole plot away, and I won't. Apart from the dead man's two sons, the dead man had a lover who attended the funeral and demanded an inheritance. The two brothers were not amused. The lover was not your average lover and somehow he got locked in the casket after being knocked out cold and mistaken for dead.
Rent this DVD. Hollywood hasn't come up with anything this funny in a decade. Only the Brits could do it. You can find it at Jumbo Video and hopefully at Blockbuster.
5 buckets of popcorn out of 5 five and you haven't even met all the characters yet. The uncle in the wheelchair, how shall I say it.............leaves his mark on the movie.
