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After Taste

Mark J. Owens | Little Ellison Wonderland | 09/03/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"When was the last time you went to your local supermarket, picked up the struff you just had to have? Were you able to walk past that display of fresh grapes, clearly imagine what they would taste in your mouth, without buying a bunch? No? That is what happened with this movie SOUR GRAPES.

I love the prior works of Larry David who was the real driving force behind the first years of the legendary SEINFELD tv series. So, when I was in the process of tracking down the DVD sets of Larry's wonderful CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM cable tv series
(even funnier tha SEINFELD I think), I strumbled upon his movie SOUR GRAPES. I just couldn't resist it, since he not only wrote it, he even directed it. In my mind, I could taste it and was sure it would be great. I was wrong.

Would I recommend it as a curiosity to fans of Larry David? Sure, but it comes across as a flat pilot for a would be tv series. Too long, bad script and lack luster directing. And I still can't figure out how Larry David blew it, since it was given life by one of the funniest and original men in the field of comedy. I just wanted to love it to death, but after viewing it, I was left with a sour
taste in my mind. Nuff said.

"

Perhaps too much Larry David to handle

George Graham | Los Angeles, CA | 02/17/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"In the year 1996, at the end of the 7th season of the hit show he helped create, SEINFELD, Larry David went and made a movie called SOUR GRAPES that showcased similarly neurotic characters dealing with taboo subjects in a comical (albeit politically incorrect) way. It was greeted with a beyond-bashing by critics, the coup de gras Roger Ebert's zero star review, where he claimed he could not remember a movie he disliked as much as this one. Ebert admits to really enjoying David's brilliant CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM on HBO, however, and I can only assume SEINFELD as well. So what happened in Larry's first and possibly last foray into film? Is it really that bad?
Well, no. The film is nowhere near as good as either of Larry's shows, and that can be attributed to many factors. First, his kind of comedy is very episodic, so once it is put into a full-length film, something is lost in translation. Also, the leads are essentially playing Larry/Jerry Seinfeld/George Costanza/Cosmo Kramer kind of hybrids, so there is a sense of perhaps tired familiarity to the whole thing, and also, when people act like Larry David that aren't Larry David, it can be off-putting; yes, George and Jerry pulled it off, but they had teams of writers and such to help perhaps weed out the sheer neurotic nature of David. In other words, this is Larry David at full pessimistic tilt; nobody acts morally right, as there is trickery and cruelty coming out the ears, all because of something extremely trivial.
Anyway, the plot screams SEINFELD/CURB/Larry David: cousins Evan (Steven Weber, from WINGS and various films) and Richie (Craig Bierko, who I have only seen elsewhere in SCARY MOVIE 4 as the Tom Cruise-esque character) head to Atlantic City with their girlfriends for some gambling and hotel sex. Once there, the down-on-their-luck duo try the slot machines, where Evan recommends Richie use 3 coins and not just 1, leading to him lending Richie 2 quarters. Richie wins the jackpot with these quarters, over $436,000, and Evan now feels he is owed at least half of these earnings (2/3 if you want to get technical) because 2 of those 3 coins Richie won with were Evan's. Richie is appalled by the idea, thus setting up a series of cruel jokes, misunderstandings, and CURB/SEINFELD-esque mishaps where Evan and Richie end up without girlfriends and their sanity.
As far as I can tell, critics not only hated the delivery but the material itself. However, this sort of content has been explored very similarly in Larry's other mediums, much more successfully I admit. So it is not that Larry David is not a brilliant guy, but perhaps that he cannot direct his own jokes (strange, I know, but Larry has not directed anything else but this). Like I said, maybe this movie is too much Larry David for one to handle. Without someone else to smooth out the neuroses, you are left with purely unlikable characters doing selfish, appalling things. However, that can be funny and often is here, and I truly believe that the pros outweigh the cons (like a few failed concepts, chief among them the fact that Richie can give himself oral sex... uh huh). So yes, many jokes fall flat, the so-called protagonists are real pieces of work, and in the end, this is not Larry David's finest hour by a long shot, but SOUR GRAPES is pretty good. Preeeety, preeeettty, preeeeetttty, pretty good."