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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"I just wasn't on your side", 9 April 2005
With its mordant, caustic humor and its sardonic and scornful wit, Eulogy certainly has its fair share of laughs. The movie is a clever comedy of family dysfunction, and is quite heartwarming in its own bizarre, comedic way. Funerals are not the happiest of occasions, but in this film, the family funeral of the traveling salesman, world-weary Collins patriarch (Rip Torn) gets a irreverent makeover, as his grown children gather together with their bratty offspring to console their pill-popping widow, Charlotte (Piper Laurie), who is now determined to commit suicide to join her husband. Just like any healthily dysfunctional family they revert back to their childhood personas and have a weekend of family bickering for old-times sake. There's Daniel (Hank Azaria), a perennial dope smoker and a once famous child actor, who is now relegated to performing in adult films; Skip (Ray Romano) and his naughty and mischievous twin boys; Lucy (Kelly Preston), who has brought home her fiancé Judy (Famke Janssen); and Alice (a fabulous Debra Winger), who is so bossy and wound so tighter than a knot that her husband and children are literally afraid to speak. The narrator and sanest of them all is the gorgeously wide-eyed Kate (Zooey Deschanel). She is asked to delivery her grandfather's eulogy and she struggles with the responsibility, but after a few days asking questions about their lives and discovering a dark family secret, she comes up with the perfect words to say - if only she can get them out before the family ruins the funeral. There are all sorts of madcap and dysfunctional antics, as the siblings unleash years of pent-up animosity on one another. For years Alice has, for some unexplained reason, been resentful of Lucy's lesbianism, and poor Lucy has endured constant taunts; this of course climaxes with a nock down drag out fight one evening at the dinner table. But it's not all anger and mayhem: Kate reconnects with an old summer love (Jesse Bradford), Alice meets a friend from her past, and Skip's twin boys get their own private lessons in sex education. The strength of Eulogy is the fine ensemble cast, and there's a great sense of believability - one can honestly accept as true that these people are a real family. Each actor exaggerates and inflates his role to great effect. Debra Winger is especially funny as Alice - she's a motor mouthed, obnoxious control freak and most viewers will experience a mixture of shock and riotous disbelief as she angrily spews profanity at Skip's boys when they turn their noses up at her cooking. All the actors obviously relish playing bad, but throughout the last part of the movie, there's a sort of half-hearted attempt to instill some honest sentimentality into the proceedings. It's all too little too late, as most viewers will probably feel that the damage has already been done. Mike Leonard April 05.
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