|  | | | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
 Buyer Beware of Asian Bootlegs of Popular TV Shows. Jul 24, 2010
There seems to be many sellers out there taking advantage of buyers on Amazon by selling inferior Asian bootlegs of popular shows. Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of these shows with "bootlegs" floating about. The fact that these sellers sell their items way below Amazon's price should tip you off. I asked one of the marketplace sellers "Hendrob" if this was an official U.S. version and they have yet to rspond...this seller has also raised the price from $104.99 to $119.99...while I awaited his response. You may have to pay a little more with Amazon but at least you are getting the real thing.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Old old man gets angry at himself for not being younger than David Duchovny's character from Californication!!! Jul 13, 2010
Larry David has basically cast himself as David Duchovny's Hank Moody character from Californication, but older. In Californication, David Duchovny had a hard life mating with teenage girls, in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David's character is constantly harassed and bothered by the things that bothered Woody Allen (in his early movies), but our hero writes in an even cleverer twist; Larry David's life is hilariously made difficult by Hollywood's lumpen-proletariat; how dare those unwashed zero's dare labour in front of Larry David's face; grrr!! Cue hilarious adventures.
So we see our hero arguing with a waiter over why he should pay a tip, this would be funny if it wasn't for Larry David's own admission that he is indeed a millionaire, and so the joke didn't hurt my sides as advertised (Larry David must really fancy himself as a persecuted victim of those horrid murlocks from H.G. Wells: The Time Machine, as he actually wrote this scene). Funnier still, Larry David hilariously shouts down aggressive female nurses who display annoying behaviour, like attending sick cues (those annoying sick people!) and he gets the once in a lifetime opportunity to humiliate a ridiculous shoe salesman (you have to see it for yourself). So towards the end of the first season, I was developing an urge to abolish the hourly wage, ban health care for sick people and bring back plebicide! Larry David, you see, is an angst ridden old man playing a much younger man who hates both men and women, young and old, with equally intense sarcasm and vanity!
A big problem I found with Larry David's angst ridden dark star of fate persona, is when he does his looking away and sneering aloof at the absurdity of people and life situations etc, he just looks like a grumpy old man. This spoilt the effect for me as I do not think that Larry David had this in mind when he wrote the script. Now if David Duchovny played Larry's role, things would be different. If you haven't seen Californication, well trust me, Duchovny was brilliant in it, and Curb Your Enthusiasm is so similar, that Larry David should have cast the younger David in his shoes. With Duchovny in Larry's shoes, we can easily imagine a classic dark masterpiece. Duchovny's hero is a sneeringly handsome and very successful Hollywood writer, who sees himself as a crucified Heideggerian God; he disparagingly condemns the mind-set of the self regarding moneyed comrades he is forced to interact with and he especially wags his finger at the local untermenschen. This is not as dramatic a description as it appears, because Larry David obviously fancies himself as the `above-all-this' man. With Duchovny starring, Curb Your Enthusiasm would be even funnier that American Psycho!
You see, I'm all for rugged anti hero's, because the genre allows the bad ass hero a few decades in their self perpetuating mischief of angriness to grow and redeem; this is why the anti hero genre works (it taps into our unconscious expectation of allowing the anti-hero time to become a better person). However, when the hero is pushing 70, well it doesn't work on a human level because we except inner growth to have hit the spot by then and thus wisdom to have flowered in old age; we do not expect the successful man, approaching the great beyond, to act like an existential teenager. I really find it creepy too that a man like Larry David should write himself shouting at young girls. Now then, all this intellectual flagellation is unconscious remember, so I still laughed along with everybody else. Just my personal bias talking here and Curb Your Enthusiasm is still a masterpiece and Larry David is a great writer. Though you could argue that he only writes for millionaires and for those who believe that millionairehood is a mere few generations away. If you find shouting at the plebs and condemning their taste in shoes hilarious and if you yearn for Victorian values, but in a funny way, then you will love this. I loved it too, but I did feel guilty for doing so, so I'll let myself off! This is just me moaning though and my whining really does not do the show justice. Curb Your Enthusiasm will go down in the annals of rib ticklers that reached the very heights of absurdist masterpieces. It really is brilliant, with superb production values and labyrinthine plot devises that always fall into very funny places. Larry David should be commended in this writing skill. I'm only commenting on the miscasting. If Larry shaved his bushy sides, like Sean Connery does, and if he wore sharp clothes, he would have gotten away with the angry old man routine, but he doesn't do this. He grows his sideburns to Charles Darwin bushiness and wears old people's clothes (well the cloths he wore in the 70's, but he was young back then so it looked cool) and he makes no reference to his age in his script, which is weird. This leads the viewer to believe that Larry David is trying to be younger! I'm sorry but that is the only explanation I can think of.
(I'm aware that I'm coming across as somewhat patronising to old people, like I'm expecting them to morph into the Dalai Lama on their 64th birthday! I'm well aware of our desperation for angrily holding onto youth with gusto and we are indeed genius at denial of death shenaniganisms!).)
Now this age issue is the weirdest part of Curb; nobody in this sitcom even notices that Larry David is pushing 70! So his wife looks like his much younger sister (I won't say daughter because of the disturbing imagery, though there is a very funny incest episode, so now I don't know what to think!) and Larry's two best friends speak to our hero as equals, they being an entire generation younger and all, and Larry's attitude to young girls is confusing! So when Larry is forced to apologise to his buds Jewish parents, well, it just didn't work because Larry David is in the same generation as the Jewish parents. Also the bit were Larry hilariously gets stuck in a box with Ted Danson's old mother in-law, that didn't work either, because, you guessed it; our hero is the same age as the mother in-law. Larry David needed to hire a younger guy to play this part. I really do not mean to be ageist; I am not. I just think that Larry David must have a huge ego to feed if he thinks he can pull off the smooth but misunderstood cheeky chappy, cookie and off balance, but cute and adorable, existential hero. Ok he may be a genius writer but why not just stay behind the camera? Why take on the reins of your masterpiece and insist on being the main character? It's analogous to Steven Spielberg elbowing Harrison Ford aside because he's the director and he's going to be Indiana Jones! God, the guy must be a walking beacon of insecurity. This is still one of the funniest and smartest shows out there.
 Cynical, bitter, dark and hilarious Jun 18, 2010
Like pretty much everyone else (I assume), I originally sought out CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM due to my obsession with the Seinfeld-show, sort of an "let's see what that other show by the Seinfeld-creator is about"-gesture. Starting at season one, it took a few episodes to get into. Among the technical aspects that set the show apart from most other sit-coms (Seinfeld included), I quickly noticed that the camera-setup in Curb evokes a kind of a home-movie feeling, and background laughter is absent, which at first makes it rather documentary-like and possibly somewhat dull by appearance to newcomers. Once one understands the rhytm of the show, however, it turns increasingly obvious that this is one of the funniest TV shows ever made, and undoubtedly the funniest and most intelligent currently in production.
It could be argued that Larry David, with CURB, keeps going from the point where Seinfeld stopped. While Seinfeld certainly approached quite a few edgy topics for its time, CURB does this with a much more cynical and dark attitude. What is amazing is that the team behind the series manages to balance Larry's bitter world-view with a touch of lightfulness and, now and then, slapstick routines, which tempts the viewer into nodding and laughing recognizingly at the madness, rather than getting into the same bitter state that Larry David is in. However, one can't help but admit that his often anti-social tendencies (which in total makes for a good combination of a Woody Allen and W.C. Fields in the same person) are partly your own. Larry David, the real one as well as the CURB one, truly has a talent of observing the seemingly tiny, tiny details which, when put together, sometimes make life unbearable, and doing so in a funny way. He does in fact often have good reason for getting upset; only he does it in a way that is often viewed as not socially adequate.
Other than admitting how right Larry David is, at least from a merely emotional standpoint, when uttering that thieves are preferable to neighbors (because thieves just take your things, whereas neighbors take your time); and other than eagerly waiting for your favorite supporting character to turn up (there are quite a few competitors), I'm really impressed by the story construction. With such a strong cast, it could be expected that the creators would use the opportunity of letting the stories function as mere excuses, but fact is that nearly every detail in each story, even a by-passing comment made by Larry at the beginning of an episode, plays a part to the story in the end.
CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM started out as a great series, and as I'm currently watching the seventh season, I'm happy to tell that it's still going strong. If you like it at all, go for the entire series on DVD.
SUPER PRODUCT AND SUPER VENDOR May 30, 2010
wow.. The set is really wonderful and makes me laugh each time I see an episode. The vendor (from Canada) couldn't have been more efficient and prompt. I wouldn't hesitate to order from them again.
Oh LD you are funny!!! May 10, 2010
Classic LD all 6 seasons!! I bought this for my husband who loves LD and he hasn't stoped whatching them!!
|
| | |
![Clerks II [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SnUx3glaL._SL75_.jpg "Clerks II [Blu-ray]")
