Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm

This hour long comedy special can be found on Season 1 DVD set of the series "Curb your Enthusiasm". It's pretty much a mockumentary akin to "Spinal Tap" or "A Mighty Wind". It details the days leading up to Larry David's first comedy special for HBO. It has him dealing various people interspersed with interviews with various celebrities. It's highly amusing and about on par with the first season of the actual show, but as fans of CYE can attest to, the first season of the show isn't exactly the best of the run thus far (not knocking the special or the show it inspired, just saying a funny show would only grow much funnier)

My Grade: B-

Larry David, co-creator and co-writer with Jerry Seinfeld of the Seinfeld series, decides to make a come-back to stand-up comedy. His agent, Jeff Greene, has even more ambitious plans - make a TV special of the occasion, including showing the planning behind the show. This is that TV special. Sort of.

Absolutely hilarious. I had already seen Curb Your Enthusiasm the series before I watched this, so knew what to expect but, even so, this is brilliant. Fresh, original, off-beat and actually feels like a real documentary.

While mostly a faux documentary, there are semi-serious interviews with people like Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander and these help you understand Larry David more. The "real" documentary sections help the humorous parts.

Plus, a bonus in that you get to see Larry David do some stand-up - didn't get that in the series. Better still - it's great!

A must-see if you're a fan of the series or of Seinfeld, or just appreciate good humour.

The original pilot of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I've seen a few times (sometimes truly forgetting that it's the pilot at all, as its stylistically 75% of the time identical to the show), has its share of laughs. But it is, in its own right, a slightly different animal, so to speak, when compared to its 5-season-and-running TV HBO series. It's meant as a hybrid of what David was tinkering as the main premise of what his show would be about- mainly him getting into awkward bits of circumstance and everyday things with people (mainly with some embarrassing or just strange results)- and his stand-up routines countered with *real* remarks from Seinfeld and others. Despite what it might seem as too much going on in a one hour show, he makes it work well. The improvisational style later nailed to a T in the seasons to come is a little more primitive here, but Cheryl Hinds and Jeff Garlin are pros at what they do here.

There's also a plot line involving David setting up a special on HBO (hence the stand-up), and then at the last moment stopping to due his "dead" step-father. Like all pilots, its got its imperfections, but its perks outweigh the valleys none-the-less. Surprising still at least in having not seen or heard a shred of David's stand-up material before is how it's actually funnier than expected. It almost makes one wonder why there isn't the occasional drop of the real stand-up stuff in the series (but then again, the very Larry David-esquire curve balls on the show are the bits of stand-up theatrical). It's worth it to check out if you're a fan and pass it by one night if by chance on one of the HBO's or on DVD; it might be funnier as well if you know some of the other little back-story bits from the show (i.e. HBO). A minor display of brilliance.

I saw this sometime during Season 7 of the series and I had no idea it was from 10 years previous. The only clues along the way were that Jerry looked a lot younger and the joke about the Clinton BJ.

It's not a conventional pilot: It's more like a one-off mockumentary special that probably inspired HBO to pursue a series. The only reason I give it only 8/10 is because the series would become even better in many episodes.

It seems that some of the interviews (with Charles and Seinfeld for example) aren't scripted at all, but are their actual comments about the real Larry David. This isn't surprising, since even the rest of the screen time doesn't seem that outside reality.

I just got done watching episode two of the second season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"; the one in which Larry is mistakenly taken for a sexual "deviant," after his wife is misled into thinking he has sexual fetishes. It's the best episode I've seen.

Coming back to the one-hour-long HBO pilot for the series, "Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm," the humor is just as strong. It's not exactly like the series and is more like a "mockumentary" - with interviews from the cast of "Seinfeld," etc. - but it's just as funny.

I actually read somewhere that this wasn't intended as a television show pilot, but based on its success it spawned the series. I'm not sure, but I do know that "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is one of the best television shows out there, and this was a great way of introducing the concept to viewers.