– BETSY SHARKEY

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES – Director Neil LaBute’s new comedy “Death at a Funeral,” which stars a posse of comics headed by Chris Rock, is the movie version of karaoke. It sings the same tune as the 2007 British underground hit, but it’s a little, and at times a lot, off-key.

Anyone who saw the original Frank Oz comedy of manners, with its Pandora’s box of problems sharing coffin space with the deceased patriarch of a dysfunctional English family, should hold on to whatever fond memories they might have. For the rest, this new “Death” has its moments, but on the whole the production is, as “American Idol’s” Randy Jackson might say, very pitchy and a couple of beats behind.

The problems start with Rock, who also serves as a producer on the film, which I guess gave him dibs on whatever role he wanted; he took the straight guy. Why? As Aaron, he’s the serious older brother to whom all the funeral planning falls, including a eulogy that promises to be deadly (the stack of note cards and the stilted speech he keeps rehearsing is the clue). But Rock wears boring like an ill-fitting suit.

Other than asking one of the funniest comics around to play the nebbishy central character, the film hews so closely to the original that it can feel like an echo chamber with words, scenes, plot twists.

For the uninitiated, “Death” is very much an ensemble farce swirling around the death of the father — in this case an affluent African-American family. Although Aaron and his wife have been living at home with the parents, Ryan (Martin Lawrence) is the favorite son who left years ago for New York, where he’s a successful novelist and the source of much unresolved sibling rivalry. The assorted extended family is a multicultural cast consisting of doctors, investment brokers and other professionals, each with issues.

Those intersecting issues get passed around like a hot potato, which makes for a fast-moving film, including the conservative boyfriend who is on a bad acid trip. The stick that gets slapped around the most is Dinklage, as someone small enough to be stuffed into tight spots when the spot he thrusts the family into turns out to be tight indeed.

LaBute has done better mining the fun out of some of the setups than others, with James Marsden engaging as the accidentally drugged boyfriend and Tracy Morgan a good fit as the fat friend saddled with wheelchair-bound old Uncle Russell (Danny Glover) and all that accompany his advancing age.

In fact most of the ancillary bits swirling around the brothers hold up to the translation pretty well. But when the center is weak, the cake falls.

Rock and Lawrence just never gel as dueling brothers. In the film, Aaron is conflicted about his future, but Rock is even more conflicted about his comedy. He swings between the searing situational outrage, which grounds the very best of his observational stand-up, and the strait-laced, tradition-bound son and henpecked husband he is supposed to be.

It’s almost as if LaBute, whose work usually comes with a serious mean streak, wasn’t quite sure how to play nice. Though he knows how to put on a funeral so that it’s a polished and proficient affair, he never completely embraces “Death” and makes it his own.

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