Passed Away movie review & film summary (1992)

The movie begins with the death, shortly after the opening credits, of old Jack, the beloved patriarch of the Scanlan family (Jack Warden). His brood gathers for an Irish wake, to be held at the house. There is his son Johnny (Bob Hoskins), whose mother says, "You're the oldest now," to which he replies, "I always was the oldest." Johnny, a tree surgeon, is married to Amy (Blair Brown) and has assorted children with troubles of their own. His brother Frank (William Petersen) is a labor official. The older sister, played by Pamela Reed, is a dancer whose marriage to a gay man (Tim Curry) ended in divorce, although she hasn't told anyone. Another sister, played by Frances McDormand, was once a cloistered nun but is now an activist nun, working in Latin America. She brings a political refugee to the funeral.

There are other characters. A lot of other characters, including Maureen Stapleton as the mother, Nancy Travis as a mysterious woman in black who may or may not have been the late Jack Scanlan's mistress, Peter Riegert as the local embalmer who was once in love with Terry (Pamela Reed) and assorted aunts, priests, neighborhood brats and others. The over-all effect is something like Ron Howard's "Parenthood" (1989), but somehow while that film purred along smoothly, "Passed Away" keeps looking like a traffic jam.

One difficulty is that most of the characters are barely introduced before - whammo! - their problems are explained. They should wear name tags (Hi! I'm Johnny, and I'm in mid-life crisis).

Bob Hoskins, whose character is the one the others revolve around, is going middle-age crazy, and wants to climb a mountain or wrestle a bear. The Petersen character is concerned about filling his father's shoes at the union. Terry convinces her ex-husband (Curry) to come along to the funeral, where he has several awkward scenes in which his only function is to appear dysfunctional.