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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For a movie billed as a comedy, director Frank Oz picked an odd setting — a funeral.Then again, funerals are laden with ceremony and somber faces, and the director of movies such as “In & Out” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” knows those elements can be fertile ground for laughter.

Oz’s “Death at a Funeral” debuts in theaters on Friday, and so far most reviews are good and support the director’s efforts to turn a story about a right proper British funeral into a barrel of laughs.

“There is nothing funny about (funerals). I’ve been to too many, and they are painful,” he told Reuters.

“But whenever you have an event like a funeral — somewhere where you have to act a certain way — that is always ripe for comedy.”

Oz, 63, ought to know. Early in his career, he worked as a puppeteer for Jim Henson Co., and was the voice of several of Henson’s Muppet characters, including outrageous Miss Piggy.

The director also has worked with top comedians including Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray, and Oz said they all look at life from peculiar angles, which is one reason they can be funny.

Kirk Honeycutt, a critic for show business newspaper The Hollywood Reporter, called the funeral a “topsy-turvy” one that makes for “smiles, giggles, pleasant guffaws and several solid, sustained laughs.”

“Death at a Funeral” certainly starts on an odd footing when pall bearers deliver the father’s body to his son Daniel’s house for the ceremony, and it is the wrong body.

Things only get worse as a family member dodges his debts, friends turn up stoned and allegations arise that the dearly departed was gay.

“Death at a Funeral” features a cast of mostly British actors such as Matthew Macfadyen (Daniel) who are not well known to U.S. audiences, which could hurt the movie’s box office appeal.

But Oz said he never wanted Hollywood stars for the movie because audiences should believe the characters are real and not actors playing parts. Moreover, he said he doesn’t pay much attention to box office reports.

“I want audiences to believe they are their characters. It’s a much more pure way to go,” he said. “I’m not a guy who looks at (box office) grosses … that’s not my job. My job is to make a film I’m proud of.”

And that matters in life, as much as it matters in death — at a funeral.