Saturday
08Nov2008
Chris Rock Remaking/Ruining 'Death at a Funeral'
Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 12:14AM
There are plenty
of reasons to be lukewarm about the just-announced remake of
Death at a Funeral. To begin with it, I can't
help feeling this all could have been avoided if more people simply went to see
the comedy last year. It's a great British farce, in line with the legendary BBC
series Fawlty Towers, which also didn't find an audience in time. (Did
you know there were only 12 episodes of that John Cleese classic?) British
farces are tough to get right because they depend so much on the chaos theory
and Murphy's Law executed with the precision of a ballerina.
Second thing: It's being remade by Chris Rock. Now, everybody knows Rock is an incredible stand-up comedian. He was probably the most significant comic on stage in the 1990s, with a little carryover into this decade. But his movies are ass.
Let's not discuss the early films, before he was "Chris Rock." He had smaller roles in a lot of movies 15 - 18 years ago, but that's like analyzing Kevin Bacon in the original Friday the 13th. Instead, let's focus on the ones he made as Chris Rock, funniest damn man on the planet who could write his own scripts and get them made. Down to Earth completely blows, Head of State is worse than that, and I Think I Love My Wife was one of the worst films of 2007, even with Kerry Washington in lingerie. They've gotten progressively worse, and it's not like the bar was set that high to begin with.
The last two are particularly telling, because he wrote, directed, and starred in them. He shouldn't write movies and he sure shouldn't direct them. He's less effective the more he does. Well, maybe he got the memo, because The Hollywood Reporter says the project is currently looking for a director. That said, Rock is co-writing the script with Aeysha Carr, moving the madcap events that surround a family funeral from the British countryside to urban America. So it's hard for me to look at the pieces in play and think this is a good idea. If people see it and it follows Rock's trend, they'll never go near the original, when that's the movie they should be watching all along.
Colin Boyd | Permalink | in Chris Rock, Comedies, Remakes | Print Article | Email Article | 1 Comment | Share Article
Reader Comments (1)
This would've been a great April Fool's Day joke if it weren't for the fact it's the eighth of November.