Eulogy (2004)

Part of what makes this movie so great is that not everyone gets it. Like all of Wes Anderson's stuff, the Big Lebowski, almost everything that comes out of England, etc. etc. etc., it's just too smart for most people in America. This is sad, but it serves as a good barometer for me. Lots of badly-written bad reviews + some really well-written good ones = a decent chance it's better than average. I honestly have not met anyone with an actual adult sense of humor who has not loved this movie.

You don't have to love movies or acting or dark comedies to like this movie. You just have to have your brain turned on and you have to like to laugh. I swear, whatever you're expecting, it will surprise you.

Fmovies: We've seen this kind of thing before -- The Dysfunctional Family Get-Together, Black-Comedy Division -- but this one has a cast to die for and a bitter poignancy that imparts the sly and frequently mean-spirited wit with genuine feeling. Edmund Collins (Rip Torn: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) has died, leaving behind a suicidal widow (Piper Laurie: The Faculty), a handful of neurotic offspring, and their spouses and kids, most of whom have had the Collins craziness rub off on them in the worst possible way. Only college student Kate (the luminous and sharp-edged Zooey Deschanel: Elf) has her head on straight, but even that won't help her write Grandpa's eulogy when no one has a kind word to say about him. Sure, this is one of those thank-god-your-own-family-ain't-this-bad movies, but I dare you not to find yourself really kind of wishing you could hang out with Hank Azaria's (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) Daniel, a washed-up former child star (and Kate's dad), and Famke Janssen's (X2: X-Men United) Judy, lesbian lover to Collins daughter Lucy (Kelly Preston: The Cat in the Hat), who delights in tweaking her future sister-in-law Alice's (a deliciously disturbed Debra Winger: Radio) homophobia. And Glenne Headly is always a treat, here as an old family friend who finds herself putting out emotional fires... and restarting an old one. Writer/director Michael Clancy makes a promising debut here, adroitly juggling diverse, expansive characters, and not only does he never let them descend into the cartoonish, he gets us to really care about them, psychoses and all.

No spoilers here. Regardless of what others say, the film is great. It's creative and brilliant. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes intelligent, witty irony with a twist of twisted thrown in for good measure. Zooey Deschanel delivers an amazing performance. The characters are deeply disturbed in enduring and charming ways. Black humor is a beautiful thing and they did a wonderful job of getting laughs from a macabre situation.

The cast of character actors rounds out a well-written film. Ray Romano and Hank Azaria deliver priceless performances. Generally kid actors are more noise than comedy, but in this flick the kids have been given primo comedy. Rene Auberjenois' cameo was a bonus.

Eulogy fmovies. Eulogy is centered around the death of a family patriarch, Edmund Collins (Rip Torn). After the death comes the funeral, which is where this story takes place, from the time of his death up until the funeral, where this quite dysfunctional family has to live together for the next few days. An ordinary cast could not have done the job that this one did. They turned what seemed to be a regular movie into a pretty funny movie. I guess it was supposed to be a dark comedy, but it was not all that dark to me. The character development was quite good, for a movie that featured so many key players, it manages to let you get to know just about everyone pretty well.

Kate Collins (Zooey Deschanel) is the granddaughter of Edmund and is asked by her grandmother to deliver the eulogy, something she was hesitant about doing, considering she really knew very little about the man. Despite her constant asking, her family could not come up with any nice stories about her grandfather to tell. Zooey is pretty much the straight (wo)man in this comedy.

Daniel Collins (Hank Azaria) is Edmund's son and Kate's father. Daniel was a child actor whose big fame came when he coined a catch phrase in a peanut butter commercial, making him Edmund's favorite son. He and Skip Collins (Ray Romano) were my favorite characters.

Skip Collins is Edmund's son and Kate's uncle. Skip was the son who was always trying to get his father's attention and felt he was the unloved one because of Daniel's success. He was probably the funniest character in the movie, along with his twin sons and Daniel.

The twin sons of Skip are named Fred and Ted Collins (Curtis and Keith Garcia). They are at that age where pretty much everything turns them on, so when their aunt and her "lifemate" showed up, it was all fun for them.

There are many more characters and dysfunctional family situations here that I could not get to them all in a short review, but this movie turned out better than I would have thought and is worth watching at least once. 7/10

For all the sour, lemon faced people out there who thought this movie was pointless, plot less and laugh-less, obviously you weren't watching the same movie as I was.

This movie is smart and funny, with an amazing cast. Anyone watching will feel connected on a personal level to at least one of the characters. Will it be the caring, normal granddaughter, the suicidal grandmother, the control freak sister, the black-sheep brother, the lesbian sister or her hilarious lesbian lover, or maybe it'll be the pot smoking ex-actor? Who knows, but trust me you will find solice in one of these people.

I highly recommend this movie for anyone looking for a laugh at something a bit morbid.

Film Review: EULOGY

Directed & Written by: Michael Clancy. Produced by: Steven Haft, Richard B. Lewis & Kirk D'Amico. Director of Photography: Michael Chapman. Edited by: Richard Halsey. Music by: George S. Clinton. Released by: Lions Gate. Country of Origin: USA/UK/Germany. 85 min. Rated: R. With: Hank Azaria, Zooey Deschanel, Glenne Headly, Piper Laurie, Kelly Preson, Ray Romano, Rip Torn & Debra Winger.

It takes a much more dire occasion than a holiday to force the Collins family together. The death of Grandpa Collins (Rip Torn) finally brings the embittered family members under the same roof. Kate (Zooey Deschanel) and her has-been actor father (Hank Azaria) find themselves stuck with Uncle Skip (Ray Romano), a sleazy lawyer who has raised two sons so equally vulgar that their own mother has abandoned them. His sister Lucy (Kelly Preston) arrives with her lesbian lover Judy, announcing they're to wed; this sets off uptight Aunt Alice (Debra Winger) on a rampage. The family's bickering turns into an all-out brawl, with every possible insult and betrayal coming out of the wood work. And as if the constant feuding weren't enough, Grandma Collins (Piper Laurie) seems bent on offing herself with increasingly creative methods. By the time the funeral rolls around the plot has taken dozens of bizarre twists.

Rich with laugh-inducing dialogue and eccentric characters, this is a madcap comedy at its blackest. Ray Romano proves to be funnier as a slimy creep than as his nice-guy sitcom persona, and deadpan Zooey Deschanel shines as the film's central character. The cast as a whole makes the careful balance of comedic timing and delivery seem like second nature. While the film often falls short on logic, it succeeds in laughs.