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Curb Your Enthusiasm


Weapon X

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I know there's been a thread about this show, but none with as creative a title as mine.

 

I think this and Trailer Park Boys are the best comedies on TV right now. I swear, when I watch this show, I bust my sides open from non-stop laughter. Plus, being rich like my homeboy Larry David is something to aspire to.

 

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Larry's wife on the show, Cheryl, is a trooper. I can't believe she takes his behaviour in such stride. Jeff is cool, because he's a "fat fuck" adulterous manager with a bitch of an ex-wife. Richard Lewis, the ultimate hypochondriac, is cool.

 

 

 

from hbo:

 

verité-style footage of David (playing himself) at home, at work and around town, as he gets into predicaments with fictional and real-life personalities. With cast regulars Jeff Garlin (as manager Jeff Greene) and Cheryl Hines (as wife Cheryl) reprising their roles, the series features appearances by guest celebrities playing themselves or character roles.

 

Candid, unsparing and self-deprecating, Curb Your Enthusiasm brings the off-kilter comic vision of Larry David--co-creator and co-executive producer of one of the most lauded comedy series in TV history, Seinfeld--to HBO. The series blurs the lines between reality and fiction, as David (playing himself) and a cast of real and fictional characters are followed around Los Angeles by a ubiquitous camera that chronicles the private, often banal world of a (relatively) public man.

 

Having evolved from the 1999 HBO special Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, this series proves how seemingly trivial details of one's day-to-day life--a trip to the movies, a phone call, a visit from some trick-or-treaters--can precipitate a "Murphy's Law" chain of misfortune to hilarious effect. Like George Costanza in Seinfeld (a character loosely based on David), the protagonist of Curb Your Enthusiasm has a knack for getting himself into uncomfortable situations that end up alienating him from peers and acquaintances.

 

To keep the narrative fresh and spontaneous, Curb Your Enthusiasm is shot without a script; the cast is given scene outlines and often improvise lines as they go. The result is an unpredictable format that's unlike anything else on TV.

 

Season Three episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm featured guest appearances by Martin Scorsese, Alanis Morissette, Martin Short, Paul Reiser, Wanda Sykes, Susie Essman, Tim Kazurinsky, Cheri Oteri, Amy Aquino, Shelly Berman, Paul Dooley, Julie Payne, Kaitlin Olson, Mina Kolb, Louis Nye and others.

 

Some critical acclaim for the past seasons:

 

Time Magazine: If John Cassavetes had directed Seinfeld, it might have looked like this. (CYE) can make you laugh till you squirm.

 

N.Y. Daily News: (4 Stars) Curb my enthusiasm? No way. (Curb) has given HBO its best sitcom since The Larry Sanders Show and given all of television the best sitcom since Seinfeld. Not too shabby for a show that isn't even scripted. (It's) so real and so absurdly comic precisely because the rhythms are so natural.

 

L.A. Times's Howard Rosenberg: Funny and wickedly weird, CYE has David playing himself improvisationally in front of fluid hand-held cameras. The cinema-vérite style and chatty tone are perfectly suited for the material, for you have no sense here of anyone acting. This show is a gas.

 

Hollywood Reporter: CYE has a unique sensibility. Working without a script and on location must complicate the job of director Robert B. Weide. To his credit though, scenes shift smoothly from one to another, and the interaction among characters feels natural -- not forced or hastily improvised. (Hand -held cameras) give the show something of a documentary texture, a spontaneity and realism that make it stand out from the typical sitcom. The level of humor ranges from mere chuckle-producing to out-and-out hilarity. Curb your enthusiasm? Not for this series. It's a laugh-filled winner.

 

Newsday's Marvin Kitman: The new half-hour series fulfills my happiest expectations. It's a quietly funny show and great fun. Continuing the cinema vérite style of the special, it is directed again by Robert B. Weide. His cameras follow David through the minutiae of his life. Nothing can dampen my enthusiasm. I haven't enjoyed a new cable comedy so much since the first episode of Larry Sanders.

 

New York Times: The show is styled as cinema vérite with waggish musical interludes playing counterpoint to the deadpan humor. You find yourself laughing at the uncomfortable situations (David) creates for himself, and even sympathizing with him. Go figure. A very funny comedy of comeuppance.

 

Daily Variety: No one has created a funnier TV character this fall. It's a show viewers will remember the following day and likely laugh at even harder than they did the first time. Series is shot in a neo-docu style that's often as unsettling as David's behavior. HBO deserves kudos for greenlighting such a terse character study.

 

San Francisco Chronicle: (Highest rating) It's howlingly funny, groaningly close to home and usually both.

 

Detroit Free Press: A wonderfully acerbic half-hour series... This unique show offers a fresh comic perspective. It's unlike any conventional sitcom wandering around the airwaves. This one's really a deliriously inventive comedy.

 

Boston Herald: This new series is fabulous. I can't possibly curb my enthusiasm. (CYE ) is well written, very funny and really another reason to tune into this pay cable channel, which seems to have a knack for giving us the most watchable TV on TV.

 

Newark Star-Ledger: CYE is the most stylistically innovative comedy to hit American television since HBO's great The Larry Sanders Show. It's also the most squirm-inducing look at everyday deceit that I've seen outside of an Albert Brooks or Woody Allen movie. Fans of innovative TV will want to check it out just because of format: CYE may be the first entirely improvised narrative comedy series in American TV history.

 

Indianapolis Star: Seinfeld fanatics will love the show, which is shot on video but made to look like film, giving the show the feeling of cinema vérite Seinfeld. What makes both shows great is the way they weave insignificant seemingly unrelated events into one cohesive story. The situations were funny then. They're funny again.

 

Philadelphia Inquirer: It's all filmed documentary style with hand-held cameras. What emerges is unsettling periods of calm (unheard of in a sitcom), punctuated by intense hilarity. You can't stop watching.

 

New Yorker: Almost unbelievably funny.

 

People: If you've been feeling comedy-deprived since Seinfeld went out of production .... Go ahead, enthuse.

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  • 6 months later...

I remember back when Seinfeld was on Must See TV Thrusdays on NBC. The next day at school was a discussion at the lockers (watercoolers for those who were working in offices, I’d imagine). Curb Your Enthusiasm should be like that.

 

For those who saw the Ben Stiller’s birthday episode: “I like tits!”

 

 

 

i like srgn gnrl's quote at the top.

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i seen pretty much all of them thanks to HBO on demand. me and my housemates decided on getting this and it's been more than worth it.

 

i think the funniest episode i've seen is definitely "KRAZEE EYEZ KILLA".

when larry starts critiquing the rap i was dying.

 

the funniest character has gotta be jeff's wife. her reaction to Larry turning down the tour of their new house was a fuckin pisserrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

thanks so much.

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  • 2 weeks later...

YES!

 

This show fucking rocks!

Funny ass scene in the last episode when Larry David was in the backseat of Ben Stillers car. They drop off the passenger from the front seat and Ben asks Larry to get in the front. Larry declines because they only have a few blocks to go. Ben gets pissed because he doesn't want to seem like he's chauffering Larry around and proceeds to calling him a whiney man child and they argue over nothing for a minute. Also larry's trying to hook his blind friend up with a "blind date" with a muslim women. The retarded guys washing his car. Larry is just like George Kastanza. I love it.

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  • 1 year later...

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