Tracy Morgan, left, and Chris Rock star in the Hollywood remake of the British comedy Death at a Funeral. (Screen Gems/Sony Pictures)

The world clearly needs more funeral comedies. How else do you explain the fact that the 2007 British farce Death at a Funeral has been remade twice in three years? First there was the 2009 Bollywood knock-off, Daddy Cool, and now comes the U.S. copycat, a gag-for-gag remake with all the belly laughs of the original but none of the context.

Director Neil LaBute coarsens the original premise with added slapstick and violence and more crude jokes.

The original Death at a Funeral, directed by Frank Oz, was a slight but inspired black comedy whose humour depended largely on the reactions of its uptight British characters to an escalating series of embarrassments. This new version, made for Hollywood by Neil LaBute, swaps Anglo repression for African-American frankness, with an all-star black ensemble not known for restraint: Tracy Morgan, Martin Lawrence … need I say more?

Screenwriter Dean Craig has transplanted his 2007 script from an elegant English country house to a swank L.A. mansion and tried to make it hip by spicing it with jive talk and references to Tupac Shakur, Dreamgirls and the like. LaBute coarsens Oz's original direction with added slapstick and violence and a few more crude jokes, none of which make the story any funnier than it was.

The funeral of the title is for an elderly man who has left behind a grieving widow, a couple of quarreling adult sons and a secret gay past that's about to tumble out of the closet as spectacularly as his corpse will come rolling out of its coffin.

The oldest son is Aaron (Chris Rock), a steady-Eddie accountant type, who has been saddled with arranging and paying for his late dad's ceremony. The younger, favourite son, Ryan (Lawrence), is a best-selling author, who has flown in from New York to soak up the adoration of his mama (Loretta Devine), stiff his bro on the funeral bill and charm the sexiest young thing (Regine Nehy) on the guest list. Aaron, a wannabe writer himself, simmers with a resentment that's only made worse when guest after guest wonders aloud why Aaron, and not Ryan, is delivering the eulogy.

But the first indication that this isn't going to be just your typical tense family gathering comes when an incompetent undertaker delivers the wrong body. Then, en route to the funeral, cousin Elaine's (Zoe Saldana) nervous white fiancé, Oscar (James Marsden), unwittingly ingests what appears to be Valium but is actually a designer hallucinogenic cooked up by Elaine's brother Jeff (Columbus Short), a pharmacology major at Pepperdine. By the time poor Oscar arrives at the house, he's seeing imaginary dogs and talking to lawn ornaments.

Aaron has nerves, too, as he repeatedly tries to rehearse his eulogy, only to be continually interrupted by a strange guest, a sad-eyed dwarf in a leather jacket (the priceless Peter Dinklage, repeating his role from the original film), who is eager to tell him something in private.

Finally, Aaron gets up to give his speech, only to be interrupted this time by the delusional Oscar, who's convinced he sees movement inside the coffin and frenziedly tries to pry it open. The ensuing struggle ends with the body of the deceased spilling onto the carpet before the shocked mourners. That outrage kicks the farce into high gear. The madness that follows includes a blackmail plot, a desperate attempt to hide a second dead body, some nude roof-climbing and more misadventures with the spurious Valium. Not to mention a hilariously icky episode involving Morgan, Danny Glover and a toilet seat that the Farrelly brothers would be proud of.

Regina Hall plays a wife with a ticking biological clock in Death at a Funeral. (Screen Gems/Sony Pictures)

The commercial reasons for this remake are obvious: the original film, with a cast mostly unknown outside the U.K., had a limited release in North America. LaBute and Craig haven't come up with a valid creative reason for it, however. Playwright-cum-filmmaker LaBute, a connoisseur of reprehensible human behaviour in his own writing (The Company of Men, Fat Pig), brings little of his dark style to the movie. Craig adds a few new things to his screenplay, but they aren't developed. Aaron's wife, Michelle (Regina Hall), is now desperate to have a baby and ovulating during the funeral, which promises a new farcical angle as the two try to sneak in some sex between the other shenanigans. Only that gag never materializes.

The actors don't improve on their British counterparts, either. Rock is too bland in his straight-man role — his Aaron doesn't come across as a frustrated man harassed and aggrieved, but just a dude who's mildly pissed off. Lawrence plays up Ryan's booty-trawling horndog side to the point where he's almost winking at the camera. Marsden, with glistening eyes and an idiot grin, is splendidly silly as the drugged Oscar, but he lacks the sweet lunacy that Alan Tudyk brought to the original character.

Marsden splits the lion's share of the laughs with Morgan, who plays Norman, the whiny hypochondriac stuck tending to Glover's foul-mouthed, wheelchair-bound Uncle Russell. Only it's not Morgan's character that's funny, but Morgan himself, especially when he indulges in comic patter that echoes his daffy riffs as off-the-hook Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock. Glover, too, just makes the crotchety Russell into a self-parody, even muttering his classic Lethal Weapon catchphrase, "I'm getting too old for this s—t."

This doesn't seem to matter. To judge from the gasps of surprise and whoops of laughter at the screening I attended, the producers calculated correctly — despite its flaws, Death at a Funeral still works at a fundamental level. Craig has successfully tapped into a universal truth — that the funeral, the saddest and most solemn of occasions, is also the one ripest for rude and raucous comedy.

Death at a Funeral opens April 16.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.