Larry Charles favours comedy in which an awkward encounter is allowed to get worse. We rate his character-led television work highly, but his move towards provocation comes with a risk: shock can become a substitute for a joke.
Fi1m perspective
In Seinfeld (1989), the listener’s disbelief can be funnier than the line that prompted it. Larry Charles contributed as a writer, helping to develop Kramer and giving the comedy some of its darker stories. We rate the series highly for its plotting and ensemble acting, which make these selfish people worth spending an evening with. The opening episodes are tentative, but the selfish quartet reward the patience.
The craft around Charles’s writing matters. Cinematographers Robert Berry and Charles W. Short make the listener worth watching, while editors Robert Souders and Bill Lowe give objections and interruptions room. Production designer David Sackeroff keeps the surroundings ordinary enough for petty arguments to feel at home. Jonathan Wolff’s music gives the characters’ self-satisfaction a suitably cheeky accompaniment. Charles’s writing is one part of a shared achievement.
With Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000), Charles moved into directing and a more improvisational way of working. Larry David’s everyday disputes give that interest in difficult behaviour plenty of room. We laughed at David’s persistence because the supporting cast know how long to let him talk himself into further disagreement. The repeated quarrels can become wearing, though, and we would take the programme an episode at a time.
Borat (2006) takes that appetite for awkwardness into encounters with unsuspecting people, with Sacha Baron Cohen as the performer. Charles’s skill here is leaving room for reactions that neither director nor performer can entirely predict. Brüno (2009) continues the collaboration, while Religulous (2008), with Bill Maher, pursues his interest in provocative non-fiction comedy. Having moved away from sitcom construction, he makes the uncertainty of an encounter part of its appeal.
The weakness is an overreliance on shock, which helps explain why The Dictator (2012) feels uneven. Making somebody uncomfortable does not necessarily give us much to watch once the first surprise has passed. We would start with Seinfeld, where a character need only object to something trivial to be worth watching.
Biography
Larry Charles is an American screenwriter, director and producer. He was a staff writer for the sitcom Seinfeld for its first five seasons, from 1991 to 1994.
Charles directed 19 episodes of the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm beginning in 2000. He has also directed the films Borat (2006), Religulous (2008), Brüno (2009) and The Dictator (2012).
He began his career writing for the sketch series Fridays in the early 1980s and later worked on The Arsenio Hall Show and Mad About You.
