Burke and Hare

‘Sweeney Todd” meets Ealing Studios in the so- so black comedy “Burke and Hare.”

The title characters (Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis) are a pair of Irish con men who, in a splendidly grubby 1828 Edinburgh, meet the lucrative demand for medical cadavers by prematurely nudging a few living people into corpse status. Soon they’re bashing people over the head while the celebrated teaching surgeon (Tom Wilkinson) they work for pointedly avoids asking too many questions.

Meanwhile, the invention of photography threatens to link the missing-persons file with the killers, and Burke falls for a streetwalker turned actress (Isla Fisher) who wants to stage an all-female production of “Macbeth.”

All of the actors are enjoying themselves, and the movie is stuffed with history, atmosphere and vivid characters. What’s in short supply, though, is laughter.

John Landis, the director of “Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers,” has a chipper feel for the morbid, but his ideas about what is funny (such as a soldier who keeps fainting at the gory sights) are dated.

The film was produced in part by Ealing Studios, the factory for daffy 1950s Alec Guinness comedies about dapper murderers. Sticking too closely to that template (while tossing in lots of blood and cursing) yields a film that is sporting but forgettable.

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