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Movie Geek Rage: DEATH AT A FUNERAL Remake – We Are Movie Geeks

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Movie Geek Rage: DEATH AT A FUNERAL Remake

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death at a funeral

One of my favorite comedies of the past five years was Frank Oz’s DEATH AT A FUNERAL. It’s a tremendously funny film with an amazing cast and a lot of scenes that stuck with me long after I saw it and passed it on to friends. Yes that’s right, I have purchased this movie more than once for myself and ended up giving it to a friend because I know they’ll love it, and they always do.

Frank Oz is a very good director. Sure he’s a master puppeteer and is of course the legendary voice of Yoda, but he’s also a very good director and has made some really good films over the years like THE SCORE, WHAT ABOUT BOB, THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD, and THE STEPFORD WIVES. There are only a few missteps in his directing career and some of his films have achieved cult status like THE DARK CRYSTAL. The point is the man is a great director, and he clearly knows comedy, and all kinds of comedy at that. DEATH AT A FUNERAL was perfect for him. The writing was tight, and the comedy was near perfection. But the cast is what really sold it on top of that.  The cast of actors like Alan Tudyk and Andy Nyman really kept the film going strong and brought a ton of laughs.

Now this isn’t an old movie. It’s from 2007.  That’s less than three years ago, and here we are on the precipice of movie remake hell…. that’s right, for some reason Hollywood has gotten the great idea to remake a classic film from one of the better directors of his time, with one of the worst directors of all time. Neil LaBute, who’s responsible for literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen, The Wickerman is going to try his hand at comedy with a remake of Death at a Funeral.

Now some times I can get behind a remake, and usually I don’t let horror remakes get to me, especially if they’re from another country. But when you remake a movie, simply to get another audience to see it, even though the original is in the language the remake is, I get annoyed. The remake of DEATH AT A FUNERAL is an urban retelling with Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence. In the trailer, which didn’t make me laugh at all (AND GAVE AWAY THE ENTIRE FILM) Chris Rock seems be playing it very cool, while Martin Lawrence and Tracy Morgan act it up. Meanwhile James Marsden is playing the Alan Tudyk role, only without a shred of humor involved.

I can’t condone this kind of selfish money grabbing behavior. Hollywood is simply repackaging a film by removing everything that was good about the first and putting in large doses of awful. I truly despise everything about this film and I hope that it tanks at the box office. With the online movie blogger community already destroying it you can rest assured it’s going to be smashed online at it’s release.

If you doubt then check out the trailer here and tell me honestly if you got any laughs. And please go rent the original or buy it off Amazon. It’s a great film and I know you’ll laugh quite a bit.