The Movie
If someone told you there was a black comedy about a funeral coming out, starring Ray Romano, Hank Azaria, Rip Torn, Kelly Preston, Zooey Deschannel, Debra Winger, Piper Laurie and Famke Janssen, wouldn't you be interested? Your humble reviewer certainly was. Then the movie got pushed forward a week, then back five months, then back two more months, then another week, then another four months, and yet another month. Then, it received an L.A./N.Y. release before heading into the ether. I forgot all about it, and life continued as usual.

This must be my lucky week though, as I've been given two DVD's not good enough for theaters (Control being the other disc.) To be fair, Eulogy was the victim of a merger between Lion's Gate and Artisan, which left the company with too many movies and too few weekends to release them. But one has to think, if it was any good, the company would find a way to get it into theaters. Does that line of thinking work for this film?

Written and directed by first-time auteur Michael Clancy (creator of the festival darling-short, Emily's Last Date), Eulogy takes a pretty talented cast and puts them through their paces as a quirky clan reconvening in New England for the wake of Edmund Collins (Torn), the man responsible for "begat"-ing this Adams Family. It's quickly established that no one particularly liked Edmund, which leaves his granddaughter Kate (Deschannel) in a pickle. She has been charged with writing Edmund's eulogy, but she's got nothing nice to say about him.

She also has to cope with a family that has more problems than there are psychiatrists available to fix them. Her father Daniel (Azaria) had one successful commercial as a child actor, and now is in porn, while her uncle Skip (Romano) is a ne'er-do-well with a pair of twin devil children. The trio is revolting, though it's fun to see Romano play against type. The female side of the family isn't faring much better, as Aunt Lucy (Preston) and her lifepartner Judy (Janssen) have to battle the condemnation they face from Alice (Winger), a domineering woman who has turned her husband and three children into mutes. Of course, Edmund's widow, Grandma Charlotte (Laurie) has troubles of her own that lead her to attempt suicide (and not just once.)

As the family secrets come flooding out and reconciliations and understandings are arrived upon, Kate's efforts to construct a eulogy, and straighten out her messed-up relationship with her childhood friend Ryan (Jesse Bradford), continue, leading up to a ridiculous ending that in a way works, but because the film tries to walk the line between black comedy and sentimentality, falls short of where it should be. Every time the movie should have stabbed the dagger deeper for laughs, it pulled back to allow healing. The confusion in tone makes for a disappointing movie, where the possibility for a great comedy once lay.

Azaria, as always, shines, while Deschannel seems a bit restrained. She's usually at her best when her character is full of confidence, but here, she's more of a confused teen, and that's not her strong point. Romano seems to relish his chance to play a scumbag, while Winger goes over the top with her PTA mom on steroids. The rest of the cast is just kind of there, while Rip Torn is thoroughly wasted as a corpse. Considering how many other elements the movie wastes, maybe it was just appropriate.

The DVD
Lion's Gate finally lets people see Eulogy, releasing it on one DVD, packaged in your usual keepcase, without any insert. The disc features an animated, anamorphic widescreen main menu, with play, scene selection, set up and special features options, while the submenus are static. The design is sparse, but appropriate, using imagery from the film to maintain the movie's theme. The scene selection screens have still previews and titles for each scene. The set-up options include 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby English tracks and subtitles in Spanish.

The Quality
The widescreen video has an odd look to it. The colors are flat, and everything seems a bit muted. There's nothing wrong with the quality (though detail isn't strong and visual effects are weak), but it just seems a bit off. There's a fine mist of dirt that's evident at the beginning against the stark white of the opening titles' photo album, but it doesn't stick out once the film gets rolling. The amount of grain is acceptable, but the black levels can be a bit light, creating a dark gray instead of black.

The 5.1 soundtrack is wholly unnecessary for a dialogue-driven comedy like Eulogy. Only a few times throughout the film is there any evidence of a surround presence. It's hardly a dynamic mix. The 2.0 track probably could have done the trick on its own.

The Extras
There's not a whole lot on this DVD in terms of extras, with a total of almost 15 minutes in extended and deleted scenes, presented in letterboxed widescreen and Dolby Digital 2.0. The first set, titled "Meet the Family," features the intended introductions for each of the Collins kids, two extended from the movie (Azaria and Romano) and two that were deleted (Winger and Preston). There's nothing that really adds to the story, and much of the material ended up being covered later in the final film.

The second section in called "In the Basement," though only two of the three scenes actually take place in the basement (the other takes place elsewhere, but at the same tine.) A deleted take and and extended take of the Collins smoking-up in the basement covers essentially the same ground as the scene in the film, while the Tree House scene adds a bit more dialogue to the conversation between Kate and Ryan. Again, nothing earth-shaking.

Three trailers are also included (for Blind Horizon, The Cookout and Stage Beauty), but the preview for Eulogy is not among them.

The Bottom Line
There's something painful about watching this movie, and that's the unbelievably missed opportunities. With such a talented cast, this movie should have been a dark laugh riot, but every time it seems like it's about to blossom, the window is closed. There are some very funny moments, (including every time Azaria is on-screen) but overall, the film feels confused; almost as if it's afraid to cross some line. If it had tapped its toe one inch further, this could have been a hit, but instead it's a disappointment.

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*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.