This Is Where I Leave You takes all the fun out of a funeral comedy

There are two ways to deal with a movie like This Is Where I Leave You, a comedy about a mourning family that herds a dream cast of TV stars through sitcom-grade shenanigans. You can decide in advance to forgive the shortcomings of any project that miraculously collects Arrested Development’s Jason Bateman, 30 Rock’s Tina Fey, Girls’ Adam Driver and House of Cards’ Corey Stoll (with the great Connie Britton, of Friday Night Lights and Nashville, and Justified’s Timothy Olyphant for good measure) in one place. Or you can look at that formidable list (oh, and Kathryn Hahn and Rose Byrne and Ben Schwartz, of various funny things, and Jane Fonda, of Jane Fonda), note that it has been assembled to sell potty-training jokes and predictable carpe-diem insights, and feel disappointment turn to anger.

I went the anger route. Did I chuckle at a couple of dick jokes? I’m afraid so. Am I less thankful now for Bateman’s dry exasperation or Fey’s impeccable reserve? Not at all. Did I want to pummel director Shawn Levy (the man who keeps making Night at the Museum movies) with a pillowcase full of TV Guide fall preview issues? A lot, yes.

But it’s not all Levy’s fault. Jonathan Tropper, adapting his own pleasantly shallow novel, emphasizes facile punch lines and limp slapstick rather than character. A plot that engineers a four-sibling reunion with a mother who insists that her kids sit shiva for their dead father is a B-movie contrivance, but even dick jokes work better when they come from characters rather than from strained types.

And you know the types. Bateman is the good brother, wounded by a cheating wife. Fey is the white-wine mommy. Stoll is the responsible scold. And Driver is the fuck-up youngest. Each actor could do this stuff lying down, though all of them — and the rest of the cast — make the most of every eye roll, grimace and withering tone. They look under and through Tropper’s gags for what he hasn’t given them, and when they succeed, you forgive This Is Where I Leave You for a minute or two. Which is longer than you’ll remember it later, once you’ve stopped making excuses for it — or else let go of your anger.