Black 'Death at a Funeral' doesn't live up to British original
8:31 AM on 04/16/2010
In this film publicity image released by Screen Gems/Sony Pictures, Tracy Morgan, left, and Chris Rock are shown in a scene from "Death at a Funeral." (AP Photo/Screen Gems/Sony Pictures, Phil Bray)
The just released Death at a Funeral, the story of a Californian clan in mourning, is a retread of the Frank Oz-directed 2007 British comedy of the same name where a well-to-do English family comes undone at a funeral service as they face huge secrets and their own unresolved neuroses.
Flash forward to the present for a commercial, Americanized version of the story with a predominantly black cast. Chris Rock is the leading man in the role of the well-intentioned Aaron, who's hosting his father's funeral at the family home. Aaron is trying to hold it all together financially and emotionally, tending to his wife Michelle (Regina Hall)--who's revving to have sex in order to get pregnant--and his high-strung mother Cynthia (Loretta Devine), whose love is showered far more upon younger brother Ryan (Martin Lawrence). Ryan's success as a fiction writer only highlights Aaron's own frustrated attempts at producing a novel.
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