Can be EXTREMELY offensive (but then that's part of its charm)
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I must say that I'm a bit of a 'couch potato' and I really love watching TV. I particularly like it when a show comes along with a bit of 'bite' and an edge to it. CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM certainly fits that category and certainly wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but it certainly fits mine.
Larry David is a US TV producer and writer in real life. He co-created Seinfeld, which I must confess I've never watched, and is listed by Guinness as having earned a grand total of $242 million dollars in 1998 through his work on the show.
Clearly never has to work again a day in his life, but instead he does, bringing us this fantastic show. In the show he plays a slightly amended version of himself. He is a curmudgeonly chap, who sometimes reminds me of Victor Meldrew from One Foot In The Grave. He gets himself into a number of scrapes in each episode, often through his own inability to keep his mouth shut, but also through circumstances beyond his control.
The joy in watching the show is seeing how seemingly disparate events in Larry's life come together at the end of the show, and I have often found myself physically howling with laughter at the end as the different threads combine and Larry finds himself in highly unpleasant situations. It is also worth nothing that the show itself is highly improvised - the actors are provided with scene outlines but improvise dialogue themselves whilst the scenes are being filmed. This adds a feeling of cinema verite to the proceedings.
The series only has 10 episodes per series, and this set features these episodes:
1. THE PANTS TEST In this episode Larry finds himself in a tricky situation as his trousers bunch up and make it look like he has an erection, which does not please the friend of his wife who he is with.
2. TED AND MARY Starring Ted Danson and his wife Mary Steenburgen as themselves. The joy in this episode is seeing Ted Danson sending up his own image - it is particularly difficult to see Sam from Cheers with such gray hair!
3. PORNO GIL Larry and his wife Cheryl get really upset when they have to go to a dinner party given by a porn star.
4. THE BRACELET Larry finds himself in trouble when trying to buy a bracelet for his wife. One of the most amusing scenes is when Larry is barred entry to the store because he looks like a tramp, regardless of the fact that he is a millionaire so many times over!
5. INTERIOR DECORATOR Larry finds out he shares an interior decorator with Diane Keaton. The trouble is she won't give him Keaton's phone number and he really needs it.
6. THE WIRE Larry and Cheryl try to get a neighbour to help them get rid of an unsightly wire in their back garden. The trouble is that when the neighbour finds out who Larry is he tries to get him to set up a meeting with one of the stars of Seinfeld. I find this episode quite amusing, because it shows up how difficult it must be if you are famous, because surely people are always wanting you to set them up with your other famous friends.
7. AAMCO Larry gets his manager's beautiful car wrecked when he mistakes a car horn on the radio for someone 'beeping' him from behind.
8. BELOVED AUNT My favourite episode from Season 1 - Larry's wife's aunt dies and as Larry is a writer he is tasked with getting the obituary written in the paper. The trouble is that their is a typing error and the 'A' in 'aunt' gets replaced by a 'C' [think about it...] which the wife and family are NOT amused by!
9. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Larry gets into trouble when he makes a racist-like comment to a friend of a friend. He doesn't mean to be racist, he's just trying to be funny. The friend doesn't see it that way though.
10. THE GROUP Larry attends an incest survivor group to support an old girlfriend and feels the need to pretend to be a survivor himself.
The descriptions of each episode make it seem as if the show is in incredibly bad taste, and in some respects it is. It's certainly not a show I would watch with my parents, but if you like dark humour you'll love this show. When I first started watching it it was around the time that the original version of THE OFFICE was very popular, and my comparison was always with that - if you can take the bad taste humour that sometimes arose in that show, you will no doubt enjoy watching Curb Your Enthusiasm.
I heartily recommend it.
More details
Soundtrack
Good
How does it compare to others by the same director?
Not applicable
Value for Money
Excellent
What format are you reviewing?
DVD
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and was the basis for the easily rattled George Costanza. Like George, David has a tendency to speak too much, blow things out of proportion, and, most often, fa...
cocreatedSeinfeldand was the basis for the easily rattled George Costanza. Like George, David has a tendency to speak too much, blow things out of proportion, and, most often, fail ...
