EULOGY

[ 1/2] (One and one-half stars)

Dead on arrival. Running time: 85 minutes. Rated R (profanity, sex, drug use). At the E-Walk, the Cinema 1, the Lincoln Square and the Union Square.

‘EULOGY” is yet another over-the-top black comedy about a highly dysfunctional family gathered for the patriarch’s last rites.

Like last week’s similarly themed “Around the Bend,” it assembles a formidable cast to create an unlikely clan whose loud and profane arguments are guaranteed to outdo anything at your own Thanksgiving dinner.

It’s the sort of obnoxiously wacky movie in which grandma (Piper Laurie) tries to commit suicide not once but twice – the second time leaping off a bridge and accidentally landing in the middle of a tryst involving her granddaughter Kate (Zooey Deschanel).

And who could blame grandma, given the endlessly sniping between her offspring, most notably Alice (Debra Winger) – a motor-mouthed control freak who has driven her husband and three children into a perpetual state of catatonia – and the proudly out Lucy (Kelly Preston), who uses the gathering to announce she’s marrying her longtime partner, Judy (Famke Janssen).

Meanwhile, there’s no love lost between brothers Skip (Ray Romano) – a sleazy lawyer with a pair of sex-obsessed twin boys whose wife fled in terror – and Daniel (Hank Azaria), a porn actor whose career peaked with a peanut-butter commercial at age 9.

Allegedly inspired by writer-director Michael Clancy’s own experiences, this New England-set comedy follows a very familiar pattern, with the usual series of confrontations, confessions (invariably fueled by marijuana) and revelations.

The only thing less surprising than the stridently homophobic Alice showing her true colors and going at it in a parked car with a childhood pal (Glenne Headley) is that they’re interrupted by Kate and her boyfriend accidentally landing on the windshield – as the rest of the clan watches through a window.

It turns out that even the deceased father (Rip Torn) has a secret reason why he was such a distant father – not that he really needed an excuse to escape this nasty clan.

That “Eulogy” has any laughs is largely a testament to the understated Romano – he and Deschanel are the only ones in the cast who aren’t straining to be funny.