DVD Review: Eulogy

By Patrick Luce Feb 17, 2005, 15:03 GMT

The movie has a “who’s who” of great comedic actors including Ray Ramano, Hank Azaria, Piper Laurie and Rip Torn. It was written and directed by Michael Clancy – who makes his debut with this film.

In a nutshell, the movie is about a group of oddball siblings who come together for the funeral of their oddball father, played by Torn, and the hilarity that follows. The only problem is the hilarity never really starts. The movie has sparks of funny, mostly provided by Laurie, and at the end you really do start to laugh, thanks to Torn. Of course, if you make it to the end you don’t know if you are laughing because it is finally getting funny or because it is almost over.

Each actor seems to portray a role of cliché – Ramano plays the loser older brother, Azaria plays the struggling failed actor, Kelly Preston plays the lesbian sister that no one talks about, Debra Winger is the overbearing older sister and wife to a silent family. They all have equally typecast children, but you really never care about any of them.

There are moments where the movie actually tries to be funny - such as the siblings getting stoned in the basement, which kind of reminds you of The Big Chill, or the fact that every time Zooey Deschanel, who plays the granddaughter Kate, and her quasi boyfriend, Jesse Bradford, start to make out something bad happens. The problem is those moments don’t stretch into a movie and for the most part you are simply watching in horror thinking to yourself “why these great actors signed to do such a bad bad movie?”

Piper Laurie, who plays the suicidal mother to these kids, provides much of the laughs with her suicide attempts, but you start to wonder if she was really just trying to get out of this picture and wasn’t acting at all. Rip Torn, who doesn’t come into the movie until the very in, provides some laughs with his big secret, but by then it is too little too late.

This is a movie that should have been truly funny. It had the right cast and a halfway good premise, but it falls flat on its face. If you are a fan of any of these actors then I suggest you watch them in something else because this movie will only make you doubt why you thought they were funny at all.

The disc does have special features, but you may not feel like watching them if you watch the movie first. Mostly, the features consist of deleted or extended scenes with the siblings. Again, the scenes do nothing to redeem the movie, and serve little purpose but to remind you how bad the film was. There is a preview for a Val Kilmer movie called Blind Horizon that looked pretty good, but you probably shouldn’t rent or buy a movie just for a Kilmer preview.

"Eulogy" is out now and available in stores or via Amazon.

Further details and media from the film in our database.