Big Shot's Funeral  on January 17, 2003 by Shlomo Schwartzberg
When big-shot Hollywood director Don Tyler (Donald Sutherland),
remaking "The Last Emperor" in China, falls into a coma after a
heart attack, it's left to his hired videographer (Ge You) to
fulfil the filmmaker's last wish. That request--to prepare a
"comedy funeral" so Tyler can be properly reincarnated--soon
gets out of hand, attracting all manner of advertisers and
hangers-on hoping to profit from the event, while fearing that
Tyler won't actually die.  Any movie that features Sutherland,
an actor who is noted for his imperial manner on set, playing a
megalomaniacal director ought be funny. "Big Shot's Funeral,"
however, drops the ball on that and on any other clever idea its
script contains. It's a frantic, distinctly flat farce that
fails to wring any effective comedic variations on China's new
capitalism, the country's attitudes towards Hollywood and
America or on the changing face of its religious observances. It
also leaves most of its act