Two nights back on a whim I caught Death at a Funeral, a British ensemble comedy. I had gone to the theater to see another picture but that didn’t quite work out. The Funeral picture was the movie showing at the right time and place. Unfortunately it turned out to be a wrong movie. And the trailers made it even worse (but more on that in a minute)
Death at a Funeral turns out to be a rather descriptive title for the plot of the movie. A family gathers to bury their patriarch and more than one death scare emerges as chaos ensues. Brit loving moviegoers will recognize the central grieving brothers Rupert Graves (A Room With a View –it made me feel so old to see “Freddy” at 40 something), Matthew McFayden (Darcy in the recent Pride & Prejudice) from finer films but there’s also some mildly famous American faces. Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) is a stranger to the family with a naughty secret, and Alan Tudyk (Serenity) is about to marry in to the mourning brood.
Death takes place over the course of one day and as the cast drives to the ceremony at the beginning of the picture, the musical score already had me worried. It was something like a laugh track itself, all innocuously cutesy and way too manic -- elevator music on speed. Death went for easy jokes right away (crotchety old people. Ha!) and eventually crawled towards stale uncomfortable ones (gay people are weird. Hee!) But its saving comic grace is found in its longest and most telegraphed joke involving Tudyk and a bottle of “valium”. Tudyk is a marvel here, playing the same joke for nearly the entire movie while never letting his British accent or character slip through the broadly comic situation. The performance can’t have been easy but you know what they say: comedy is hard. Death at a Funeral knows this, struggling and sweating for guffaws. It’ll try anything to provoke shits and giggles. It even tries shits for giggles. Yes there’s toilet humor mixed in with the slapstick. Really gross toilet humor at that.
Watching Death at a Funeral I caught a distinct whiff of 2003 or 2004, like the movie had been sitting on a shelf somewhere for too long. Movies are rarely like wine. They don’t improve if you leave them on the shelf to ferment. But this happens. A movie bereft of big stars and without an easily saleable identity gathers mold until the cinematic gods, mercifully answering the prayers for distribution, eventually cave in. I don’t know if this was the case for this film or not. It just felt un new if you know what I mean. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
Perhaps it was the trailers served up before hand….
We watched four in quick succession. Here is how it played out. Lars and the Real Girl (in which a man orders a sex doll and tries to pass it off as real and an entire town plays along with his psychological problem to help him), Margot at the Wedding (in which two sisters bicker. one recounting the time as children when the other seasoned here and put her in the oven), The Darjeeling Limited (wacky brothers pepper spray each other and behave oddly on a spiritual journey) and Dedication (in which a man tells a child Santa Claus doesn't exist and lists his quirky faults to turn off his new coworker). And then we watched Death at a Funeral in which various dully conceived characters fall prey to very quirky situations: unexpected drug trips, dead bodies falling out of coffins, people stripping on rooftops. You know how these things happen...
While I’m sure these similar trailers are built from movies that are very different in tone (and very different from Death at a Funeral’s strenuous British giggles), they amounted to a long reductive commercial for Prestige Indie Quirk followed by an entire feature of British Quirk. It was an uncomfortable feeling and I realized once again that Hollywood has given up on promoting movie going as a habit.
Moviegoers are now only pursued during their distinct seasons. The young and easily herdable are courted all summer long with massive ad campaigns for “brand name” fare, usually sequels and spectacles. When they go back to school, adults are asked to come back to the theater for character driven films, this starts out silly (aforementioned Prestige Quirk) but it will later morph into Prestige Spectacle just in time for the massive ad campaigns to double as “for your consideration” Oscar ads. This phenomenon "all likeminded movies must be released in the same quarter" has gotten so bad that movie enthusiasts, who benefit from the spreading of wealth are actually often heard dissing it " Why is that coming out now? They should wait until December!” In December those same moviegoers can be heard griping about how many movies are out that they want to see and they can't possibly get to them all what with the holidays, yada yada. It's the new Stockholm Syndrome for Moviegoers.
It didn’t used to be this way. Movie going was once regarded as a year round habit with all the counter programming that that implies. How does this make sense from a financial aspect for Hollywood? If you release too many movies with similar audiences at the same time you cut into the profit for each. Most moviegoers do not go to everything that looks appealing to them. Especially if they come out in close proximity. So instead of seeing Lars and the Real Girl, Margot at the Wedding, Dedication or The Darjeeling Limited as they arrive, most moviegoers will pick one to see. Separate movies that appeal to the same crowd by a month or two and they might be convinced to see more than one of them. That's my theory at least. The system is now so geared to grouping all same types of pictures together in one season that you probably already know what time of year the movie studios expect your ass in a seat.
Shouldn't they want it their all year round?
