Movie Marathon // Funeral Crashers


I know what you're thinking. "Is funeral crashing really such a popular pastime that there is more than one movie about it for you to make a Movie Marathon post?" Well, obviously the answer is "Yes. Funeral crashing is a very popular pastime in movies."

If you know me at all, or have been reading my blog, you may have noticed my love of cemeteries. Now, I've never crashed a funeral. (I'm socially stunted and incapable of lying. I could never get away with it, anyway.) But I understand the fascination. Except the dead bodies. That would creep me out. Who decided that it was a good idea to put a dead body on display while trying to remember the life of someone you love? No one wants to see that.

As you can guess, it takes a very odd character to be interested in attending strangers' funerals. Most are fascinated, or intrigued, by death. But I also think that this is an extreme form of people watching. Oh, sure, it's all well and good to sit in a public place and watch how people go about their business, but I would think observing people in more rare, emotionally-heightened situations, like funerals, would be more interesting.


The Classic: Harold and Maude
"The greatest love story of all time", as described by Mary in There's Something About Mary, is between a young man obsessed with death and an old lady with a lust for life. Harold enjoys faking his suicide, crashing funerals and creating a hybrid Jaguar-hearse car. Maude enjoys pretty much everything about life and tries to impart that to Harold.

The Straight-to-DVD: Wake
Don't be scared off by the terrifying Photoshop job of the DVD cover. The movie really isn't that bad. Okay, it's not really that great, either, but it does star a funeral crasher. And Ian Somerhalder, who, I think we can all agree, makes any movie worth watching. The movie isn't really so much about crashing funerals so much as it is about having a relationship with the fiancé of a girl whose wake you crashed and whose engagement ring you "accidentally" stole off her cold dead finger while said fiancé is being investigated as a suspect in her death.

The Indie: Restless
Finally, some funeral crashers with somewhat legitimate reasons for doing so. (If there are acceptable reasons for crashing a funeral. I doubt it.) Enoch lost his parents in a car crash which left him in a coma for three months and Annabell is going to be dead in three months. So, really, they're just doing research. Enoch also has a ghost friend who was a Japanese kamikaze pilot in WWII, but that's no big deal, right?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey Tish! Thanks for the comment - it was something I wondered about. I'll look for a good webfont that does a better job of what I was trying to achieve.

Jill