Frantic 'Death at a Funeral' is good, mean fun

Although set in England with a predominantly British cast, "Death at a Funeral" is no stiff-upper-lipped comedy, but a lean, mean, and often crude, farce. Some of the visual gags may be too crude, perhaps, for viewers yearning for the classic comedies from London's Ealing Studios, where American director Frank Oz shot the film.

Oz ("Bowfinger," "In & Out") directs more in the style of Blake Edwards than Alexander Mackendrick, balancing the entrances and exits, revelations and deceptions, with the flair of a variety show host. The action takes place in the hours preceding a patriarch's funeral, as family and friends converge upon the mortuary. It becomes clear these people are possessed by so many anxieties that the burial is secondary to the real drama.

Included in this menagerie of mourners are the bereaved sons Robert (Rupert Graves) and Daniel (Matthew Macfayden), sibling rivals who travel in the same literary circles. Then there is Troy (Kris Marshall), the drug dealer who keeps losing his valium bottle filled with LSD. Subsequently this drug finds its way into the nervous systems of several unlucky characters, including cousin Martha's (Daisy Donovan) straight-laced fiance, Simon (Alan Tudyk).

At the center of it all is a gay dwarf who arrives to blackmail the sons of the deceased. Peter Dinklage has been playing this character for so long that it is becoming tiresome, but the rest of the cast puts him to brilliant use, shuttling him about the various rooms to keep his presence concealed from the rest of the guests. Each character is a running gag, driven by a single objective, and kept moving so fast that it is like watching a game of speed chess. For the duration, we follow every move with rapt curiosity. When it is over, the whole thing blows away like cotton candy in the wind.