DVD Movie Rating for: Eulogy

Rating for Eulogy: 5 out of 5 stars

Movie Plot of: Eulogy

Kate Collins, struggling through an awkward first year at college, returns to the Collins family home upon the death of her grandfather. Kate may be somewhat out of step with the party-hearty rituals of campus life, but at home she’s really a misfit: an island of normalcy in a sea of unruly Collinses.

First, there’s Kate’s father Daniel, once a child star but now, unbeknownst to his daughter, a porn actor. Then there’s tightly wound Aunt Lucy, who has waited till the last minute to announce her wedding to life partner Judy, and wildly impolitic Uncle Skip with his obnoxious twin boys. Last but not least, there’s pushy Aunt Alice, who brings a steamroller approach to everything from marriage and motherhood to her brutal dinner casseroles.

When her grandmother entrusts her with the task of delivering the eulogy, Kate naturally turns to her relatives for help. She quickly comes to realize that her own fond memories of Grandpa Collins are not shared by his children, who can only remember a distant father who, when around, could barely keep their names straight.

As Kate struggles to find the right words to commemorate the solemn occasion, the rest of the family prepares for the event with its usual anarchy. In between the raucous infighting and the hilarious backbiting, family secrets are revealed and old wounds are exposed.

In writing the screenplay for his directorial debut, Michael Clancy found inspiration in the torture and the treasure that can be found in family relationships. His experiences convinced him that a truly twisted comedy could arise out of such a somber family gathering as a funeral, given the right details…and the right family.

Says Clancy, “If you have a family who can really express themselves and go after each other in very strong ways, it can be very comical. The script goes from very broad moments—huge fights, people flying off of bridges, all sorts of strangeness—but there is also the comedy that exists in two people ever-so-slightly insulting each other, just cutting into each other in small and awful ways. Certainly everyone seems to have someone in their lives that can do that really well, and this family is just related to a lot of those people.”

DVD Production Details of: Eulogy with Ray Romana and Famke Janssen

Directed by: Michael Clancy

Cast of the movie: Eulogy

• Hank Azaria .... Daniel Collins
• Jesse Bradford .... Ryan Carmichael
• Zooey Deschanel .... Kate Collins
• Glenne Headly .... Samantha
• Famke Janssen .... Judy
• Piper Laurie .... Charlotte 'Grandma' Collins
• Kelly Preston .... Lucy Collins
• Ray Romano .... Skip Collins
• Rip Torn .... Edmund 'Grandpa' Collins
• Debra Winger .... Alice Collins
• Curtis Garcia .... Fred Collins
• Keith Garcia .... Ted Collins
• Rene Auberjonois .... Parson rest of cast listed alphabetically
• Lana Antonova .... Lace (as Lana Novac)
• Allisyn Ashley Arm .... Collins daughter
• Paget Brewster .... Aunt Lily
• Denise Dowse .... Judge
• John Lafayette .... Doctor
• Lisa Maris .... Louise
• Claudette Nevins .... Barbara Collins
• Michael Panes
• Mary Schmidtberger .... Hostess
• Natasha Sheridan .... Young Kate
• Anna Stookey
• Tyana Parr .... Nurse

Photo Gallery of the movie: Eulogy

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Eulogy Starring Ray Romana and Famke Janssen

Reviews of the movie: Eulogy

Even when grief is overwhelming, funerals can be absurd gatherings full of awkward drama and unintentionally funny ritual by rote.

In the case of "Eulogy," writer-director Michael Clancy's feature debut, there's no troublesome sadness to get in the way of the quirk factor. Character eccentricities and off-kilter group dynamics play out with a comic vengeance.

Although this black comedy doesn't always achieve its intended laughs and sometimes pushes too hard for them, at its best it offers droll glimpses of the cosmic abyss that often serves as a family's connective tissue. The terrific ensemble cast finds the right deadpan tone to deliver the dysfunction. The presence of Debra Winger will up the draw for niche theatrical audiences, and "Eulogy" should enjoy a long afterlife on home video.

Unshowy tech contributions, led by DP Michael Chapman ("Raging Bull") and editor Richard Halsey ("Rocky"), put the actors front and center in this concise comic portrait of a clan numbed by disappointment. Winger plays Alice, the oldest, loudest and angriest of the four Collins siblings, returning home to Rhode Island for the funeral of the father they barely knew (Rip Torn). His passing barely dents their self-centered orbits, and even his widow (Piper Laurie) responds with a vacant impassiveness, notwithstanding a couple of badly misfired suicide attempts.

The unlikely voice of sanity and compassion within the sorry lot is college student Kate (Zooey Deschanel, exuding practicality and emotional translucence). When she's not struggling to write the eulogy her clear-eyed grandmother requested, she's avoiding neighbor Ryan (Jesse Bradford), confused over the romantic turn their lifelong summer friendship has taken.

Kate's father, Dan (Hank Azaria), is an adult-film actor looking through a cannabis haze for his big break, having reached his show business zenith in a peanut butter commercial at age 8. Skip (Ray Romano) is a lawyer of sorts with a most unfortunate mustache, and adolescent twins (Curtis and Keith Garcia) who, when they're not being plain evil, toss around sex-talk swagger as though they've listened to Howard Stern one too many times.

The twins take a sudden interest in the gathering when their feisty aunt Lucy (Kelly Preston) shows up with her easygoing "life partner," Judy (Famke Janssen). This rather forced self-introduction is the first sign that Clancy is going to use the lesbian relationship a bit too insistently. While Alice's three children cower in silence and her husband (Mark Harelik) burbles incoherently, she all but puts Lucy and Judy on trial. By the time they announce their wedding plans, you can only wonder why the brides-to-be would want this variously mean-spirited and clueless bunch at the festivities.

But the utter irrationality of family is Clancy's point. It's no wonder Grandma sees no reason to explain her eagerness to check out. And while her suicide attempts aren't as, well, funny as they're meant to be, they do land her in the inexpert care of a dippy nurse (Glenne Headly, in sweet ditz mode) who turns out to be a crucial figure from Alice's past.

As good as it is to see Winger onscreen, her character is too strident a conception, the explanation for her malice a bit too easy. But to Clancy's credit he doesn't try to tie it all up with a feel-good ending. The dark undercurrents remain as the Collinses bid Dad farewell. The twins are still obnoxious. And Romano's Skip is still sporting that mustache.

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Eulogy is a black comedy of a family that behaves very badly when reunited upon the death of their father. With Zooey Deschanel, Hank Azaria, Ray Romano. 1:25 (language, sexual content, drug use.) At select Manhattan theaters.

Funerals persist as a favorite locus for comedy writers looking to razz the sanctity of the family. Even more than at a wedding or a Thanksgiving dinner, perhaps, attendees are expected to be on their best behavior. Invariably, adult siblings retreat into infantile modes of relating, and no one is crying over the loss as much as they think they ought to be.

So goes Michael Clancy's "Eulogy," a determinedly irreverent comedy that juices the family-reunion formula with some pleasingly prickly encounters.

Mush-mouthed Zooey Deschanel provides our eyes and ears into the combustible Collins clan, playing a young woman who is tapped to deliver the eulogy at the burial of her grandfather (Rip Torn), since none of his four children would have anything kind to say.

Like a family vaudeville act in desperate need of a director, the Collinses take turns strutting their dysfunctional stuff. The singlemindedly suicidal widow (Piper Laurie) vies for attention with her actor son (Hank Azaria), who has moved on from TV commercials to porn flicks; the sourpuss daughter (Debra Winger) who has yammered her husband and kids into blithering idiots; and the lesbian daughter (Kelly Preston) who challenges her sister's sense of decorum by bringing her partner (Famke Janssen) to the gathering.

Clancy saves his best bits for a fourth sibling (Ray Romano), a lug-headed attorney who has passed on his leering American University frat-boy spirit to his two prankster sons (Curtis and Keith Garcia). Romano's caveman-ish line readings are perfectly pitched.

Clancy dilutes the comedy with a romantic subplot between Deschanel and her not-so-platonic childhood buddy (Jesse Bradford). There also is a surprise alliance between a hospital nurse (Glenne Headly) and one of the Collins brood that is tossed in for ironic twist, but it comes off as cheaply motivated. Whenever Romano and his terrible twosome blow in, however, "Eulogy" finds its roguishly comic voice.

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"Eulogy" is the American version of Deny Arcand's "Barbarian Invasions" which won the best foreign language film at the Academy Awards last year. But, like American movies, it's a bit more crass, a bit more funny, and more raw as it explores the death of the family patriarch in a widely dysfunctional family.

The family is more dysfunctional in "Eulogy" than anyone in the family even imagines. Rip Torn plays the family patriarch who seems to have a few dark secrets in his past. His wife, Charlotte, is wonderfully portrayed by Piper Laurie. As the family comes together, Charlotte tries to kill herself a few times -- at one time by simply jumping out of a moving car and off a bridge after she tells them to "brush your teeth before you go to bed." The reality, it seems, is that she's trying to escape the horrors of her family.

The only sane one is granddaughter Katie, played by a lovely, sexy and too cute Zooey Deschanel. Zooey Deschanel's looking the spitting image of her Aunt Alice, played by Debra Winger, who is a very unpleasant character with a husband and wife who never speak.

The other crazies in the family include Katie's dad, a formerly famous child actor played by Hank Azaria, who now secretly does porn films, and Ray Romano as a sleazy lawyer who's bringing up two twin sleazy boys (played by Curtis and Keith Garcia). They're unusually attracted to their aunt, played by Kelly Preston, mostly because she's a lesbian and they sneak into the closet and watch her with her partner (Famke Janssen) and do other creepy things.

The family is coming together for a big funeral, and grandpa wants to have his body set afloat on a lake and burned, like the Vikings did (and like Mike Douglas did in his family film "It Runs in the Family"), but the gimmick doesn't seem to work in either case.

Written and directed by new filmmaker Michael Clancy, the picture is filled with jokes, but lakes a bit of heart. The dark comedy is sometimes too dark, and there's an overall feeling of off-beat weirdness that just makes this seem too icky all around. It is a family film, and if you think your family is nuts, then this will make you feel good about yourselves.

Debra Winger is a great actress, but way over-the-top here. The big problem is figuring out which character to follow through this maze of crazies, and you really only want to tell Zooey Deschanel's character to run away from home or join her grandmother in a suicide pact.

However, there are some nice portrayals, particularly by Piper and Zooey, and hopefully the young actress can find good film vehicles that don't have Ray Romano in them, since he seems to sink movies faster than the Titanic.

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"Eulogy" is one of those movies that seems to have everything going for it: an intriguing premise, great jokes, a nice personality and the kind of cast directors would trade their own relatives for. So, you want to love it. You appreciate its many fine qualities. You're certain there's someone out there perfect for it. But it's not working for you.

Written and directed by first-timer Michael Clancy, "Eulogy" is a reunion comedy about slack family bonds in the same vein as other funny-poignant messed-up family movies like "Pieces of April" and "The Royal Tenenbaums." Like them, it assembles a misfit clan for a family milestone, and looks on as old rivalries and grudges are rekindled and buried secrets are revealed.

The milestone is the death of loose-cannon family patriarch Grandpa Collins. The family gathers, and Grandma informs granddaughter Kate, a monotone but obliging college freshman, that she is expected to deliver the eulogy. Kate asks her relatives for help, which would make sense, if they weren't the ones who needed it.

Kate's dad Daniel is a former child star turned porn star still grieving the loss of a commercial he didn't get in his teens. His sister Lucy is an uptight lesbian with a laid-back girlfriend. Her other brother Skip finds Lucy and Judy's sex life inappropriately fascinating, as do his twins, Fred and Ted.

All this detachment from reality might be OK if the characters didn't also feel detached from one another. In a different movie, the process of writing the eulogy might have drawn the family together, or pushed them further apart, or resulted in some kind of forced revelation or moment of transcendence. But nothing here seems to gel.

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First-time writer-director Michael Clancy has assembled a solid cast, but many viewers may find the film's mean-spirited tone and cynical view of family life more than a bit off-putting.

The movie opens with granddaughter Kate (Zooey Deschanel) getting the bad news that Edmund 'Grandpa' Collins (played in brief cameo by Rip Torn) has died. Her grandmother (Piper Laurie) informs her that it was Edmund's dying wish that Kate deliver the eulogy, which proves no easy task given the fact that practically no one in the family has any kind words to say about him.

Bereaved kin include son Danny (Hank Azaria), who is Kate's father, a failed actor whose only claim to fame is the tagline of a peanut butter commercial he did as a child and who is now working in the porn industry; son Skip (Ray Romano), a divorced father of demonically mischievous twins; lesbian daughter Lucy (Kelly Preston), who shows up with her girlfriend, Judy (Famke Janssen); and daughter Alice (Debra Winger), an uptight harpy whose henpecked husband can barely get a word in and whose abrasive personality has a way of turning sibling rivalry into a contact sport.

Failing to take advantage of the considerable talent amassed, "Eulogy" consists mostly of a series of episodic scenes strung together in which the estranged brood alternate between bickering and bonding, the latter facilitated, in several instances, by marijuana.

Despite Tolstoy's observation that "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," the domestic discord which unfolds on screen seems much the same as other rancorous reunions in similarly themed films like "Home for the Holidays."

Overall, the film shows polish for a directorial debut and is not without some funny moments. Clancy displays a sharp wit -- supplying his characters with an endless arsenal of zingers to hurl at each other -- and succeeds in making the relationships believable.

Many of the fireworks are triggered by long-percolating tensions between Lucy and Alice, stemming from Alice's adamant disapproval of Lucy's homosexual lifestyle, which reaches a boiling point when Lucy announces that she and Judy plan to marry. And while both sisters are shown to be head cases, Lucy is positioned in a far more sympathetic light than her "close-minded" sis. Alice does eventually warm up, but not before dropping a secretly repressed bombshell of her own. She even gives the toast at Lucy and Judy's commitment ceremony, which takes place during the closing credits. Equally troubling is the film's dyspeptic depiction of family life, which portrays familial relationships as burdens to be endured rather than as sources of comfort and support. Of course, the characters' actions -- at times approaching caricature -- must be taken in the overall comedic context of the story, which at its heart acknowledges, albeit sardonically, the positive value of "family" in people's lives.

The movie ends with a bang, climaxing with a wacky funeral send-off that many viewers may deem irreverent. In fairness, "Eulogy" closes with the characters glowing in a newfound appreciation and acceptance of each other and the bonds they share, but by that time it feels like a case of too little, too late.

Due to gay and straight sexual encounters, drug content, two attempted suicides, as well as recurring rough and crude language and humor, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted.