Critic Reviews

The series can get a little repetitive — this one’s better to savor from week to week, versus stacking up as a binge. .... Every once in a while, though, it goes hard with its messaging, building to some hysterical comedy that’s also on some level a primal scream about today.

Even though such familiarity has been known to breed contempt, David’s cringe-inducing brand of confrontational contempt more often than not provides a refreshing bite of irreverence that in its own take-no-prisoners way is as patriotic if not as uplifting as the latest Ken Burns dissertation.

You don’t have to be anhedonic to embrace “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America,” the seven-episode limited sketch comedy series that Larry David cooked up with that beacon of hope and culture maven President Barack Obama. Oddly enough, with the help of co-creator Jeff Schaffer, they make beautiful comedy together.

What I will tell you is that it’s pretty, pretty, pretty funny. It’s not “Drunk History,” it’s “Cringe History.”

As with most sketch shows, some sketches hit and some miss, but David’s batting average here is decent (unless a viewer really tires of his style of humor).

The show is safer and less inventive than his best work. Still, there’s fun to be had in this time machine whose ultimate destination is dad-joke heaven.

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” always excelled when sweating the small stuff. “Life, Larry” is no different, even though it has the potential for far larger stakes than its antecedent. Those stakes are best deployed for clarifying contrast, as when David’s James Buchanan is more concerned with introducing the newfangled concept of passed apps than addressing the brewing secession crisis.

“Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness” is far from an innovative in its approach to poking fun at American history, and its lengthy sketches can grow tiring as they plod toward their expected conclusions. But .... Watching the Larry we know and love shuffling through time, arguing with presidents and generals, is funny — and during the roughest sketches, he’s still funny enough.

While the sketches in Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness sound great on paper, many feel a little tame in the execution. One problem is the format. .... It all feels too tightly scripted.

You know who the good and the bad guys are, and who you’re meant to be rooting for, even if the answer is frequently no one. In other words, it all feels a little safe. If David isn’t quite apologizing for loosing his self-interested monsters upon the world, he seems intent on making sure we know we’re supposed to be laughing at and not with them.