Comedy/Drama: Matthew Macfadyen, Rupert Graves, Jane Asher, Keeley Hawes, Daisy Donovan, Alan Tudyk, Ewen Bremner, Kris Marshall , Andy Nyman, Peter Vaughan, Peter Dinklage, Peter Egan

DEATH can be a laughing matter.

Frank Oz's very British black comedy harks back to the glorious farces of the 40s and 50s, but with a distinctly modern mindset: narcotic-fuelled hallucinations, gratuitous nudity and illicit sexual dalliances.

The humour is a bit predictable and there's a whiff of desperation in the middle of the film as screenwriter Dean Craig contrives loopy set-pieces for laughs.

When their father dies, Daniel (Macfadyen) and his successful novelist brother Robert (Graves) rush to comfort their desperate mother, Sandra (Asher).

Cousin Martha (Donovan) and her fiance Simon (Tudyk), and Daniel's wife Jane (Hawes) lend support while hypochondriac pal Howard (Nyman) discusses the new-found "pigment mutation" on his extremities and cantankerous wheelchair user Uncle Alfie (Vaughan) kicks up a stink.

The sombre mood is shattered when a stranger called Peter (Peter Dinklage) discloses a shocking secret about the deceased.

Scriptwriter Craig generously shares around the one-liners, but some of the cast invariably embellish with scene-stealing abandon, including Nyman as the twittering worrywart and Vaughan as the elderly grouch.

But Tudyk, the sole American in the cast, is the butt of the film's more outlandish twists and turns.

Daniel and Robert's father makes an unexpected appearance before Macfadyen, the film's straight man, seizes his moment to deliver a tender and moving eulogy.

"We're just thrown here together in a world filled with chaos and confusion," he orates, "with death always lingering around the corner... and we do our best."

THREE STARS