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If, because the outdated actor’s maxim goes, dying is straightforward whereas comedy is tough, comedy about dying is essentially the most high-wire act of all. Get the steadiness proper and it’s intensely, savagely humorous; when it doesn’t land, it’s a bit icky for all involved. In 2007, British screenwriter Dean Craig principally pulled off the trick with the self-explanatorily titled “Dying at a Funeral,” which was broad and crass however continuously very humorous certainly — sufficiently so for Craig to pen an inferior U.S. remake three years later. Now directing in addition to writing, he makes an attempt the same coup with frantic coffin-chasing farce “The Property,” getting forward of the sport by setting it within the States to start with. This time, the outcomes fall largely flat.
On the face of it, it’s onerous to see why. The premise — hard-up chancers try to scrap and claw their approach right into a dying millionaire’s inheritance — is outdated because the hills, however for a purpose, because it’s often good for some nasty laughs. And Craig has assembled a solid of professionals who know their approach round black humor and unhealthy style, with Toni Collette, Anna Faris and Kathleen Turner gamely main the best way. However comedy, fearsomely exact as it may be, isn’t math: Minutes into “The Property,” after a number of one-liners have landed like pebbles on moist sand, we sense it might be lower than the sum of its components. And whereas later pivots into gross-out territory are just a little gutsier, Craig’s newest — slipping into theaters after final month’s quiet premiere on the London Movie Pageant — by no means finds a slick comedian groove.
After an old-school animated credit score sequence units a jaunty, japey tone, the story opens on a glummer word. In a colorless nook of New Orleans, sadsack divorcee Macey (Collette) licks her wounds after a failed assembly with a mortgage supervisor; arriving tardily on the scene is her flaky sister Savanna (Faris), not somebody who’d be a lot assist speaking enterprise anyway. At stake is the ailing diner they collectively handle, as soon as the satisfaction of their late father. If they’ll’t get their arms on an unlimited wad of money quickly, it’ll be historical past too.
Reluctantly, they conclude that their solely hope lies with their exceedingly rich Aunt Hilda (Turner) — or extra particularly, within the heirless outdated lady’s terminal most cancers prognosis. That she’s bitterly estranged from her hard-up nieces and their mom is one impediment; that their obsequious and significantly extra beloved cousin Beatrice (Rosemarie Dewitt) has lately moved into Hilda’s roomy mansion to look after her is one other. Cue an all-out allure offensive from two girls to whom allure doesn’t fairly come naturally: Craig’s script quite takes it on religion that we ought to be rooting for the 2 sisters at its middle, although in the event that they’re extra likable than Dewitt’s greedy harridan or Turner’s venomous misanthrope, it’s solely by positive levels.
A minimum of they’re all a step up from a fourth cousin, Porsche-driving skeeze Richard (a leering David Duchovny), who’s granted little objective in proceedings past making incestuous overtures to Macey. “We’ve all the time had a factor,” he tells her. “That factor being that we’re cousins,” she huffs in response —which is about as sharp because the dialogue will get. Any high-ground differentiations between the principals are just about erased, in the meantime, of their ensuing competitors to win Hilda’s favor, significantly when their collective focus turns to getting their aunt laid on her deathbed. Intercourse offenders, honey-trapping schemes and a grisly prosthetic penis all play a component within the hijinks, but even because the rudeness escalates, the tempo stays sluggish, with extra lulls than a 95-minute runtime ought to actually allow.
Any sparkles of hilarity listed here are largely in incidental particulars of efficiency: Collette’s queasily aghast face, for instance, when spontaneously referred to as upon to empty a colostomy bag, or the virtually Pazuzu-like contempt in Turner’s characteristically throaty line deliveries. It’s been too lengthy since we noticed her — or, for that matter, the lately TV-oriented Faris — in a big-screen comedy of any word in any respect, and “The Property” positive factors most of its pleasures from the mere presence of its stars, who do their finest to spar as quick and so far as the surprisingly low-energy writing permits. However their effort is all too palpably felt: In “The Property,” dying and comedy alike really feel like onerous work.
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