In Larry David’s comedy bomb in 1998 “Sour Grapes”, Richie Maxwell (Craig Bierko) is only ending a vacation in Atlantic City with his cousin Evan (Steven Weber). Richie almost lacked money, having played her budget. It is a quarter. Leaving a casino, he asked Evan an additional 50 cents so that he can throw it into a slot machine of 75 cents. Evan agrees. A single traction on the machine earns $ 436,000. This immediately leads to a long argument on which has legal and moral rights to gains. Richie was both the one who decided to play money and the one who pulled the handle, but Evan was the one who lent him the quarters to make him possible. Evan maintains that it is at least two thirds of the jackpot.

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This leads to an increasingly dark series of scenarios that prove how horrible the two men are. Richie keeps all the money while the oncologist Evan, trying to panic, ment in Richie, saying that Richie died of cancer. Comedy? The dilemma will also lead to a cancer patient so that his two testicles are amputated. Double comedy?

The “bitter grapes” were round by criticism, which described it as off -putting, funny and otherwise too dependent on toxic mean men to be fun. Roger Ebert sadly famous gave the film zero starsWriting: “I can’t easily remember a film that I appreciated less. […] “Sour Grapes” is a film that deserves its title: it is pleated, deflated and vine. It is a dead area. “Overall,” Sour Grapes “has only an approval of 27% on Rotten tomatoes (based on only 15 reviews) and made a derisory of $ 123,000 at the box office.

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It is curious that David made “bitter grapes” because he had previously proven his universally appreciated comedy chops on the successful series “Seinfeld”, which was still broadcast at the time (Although David left the series in 1996). What happened?

It can be a cheesy complaint, but the “bitter grapes” are even mistaken. David seems to think that the expression “bitter grapes” refers to be a painful loser. The sentence, in fact, comes from one of the fables of Aesop, in which a fox cannot reach grapes that grow on a vineyard. Rather than continuing to try to get them, the fox abandons, reasoning that the grapes were acute anyway. It is a story to justify his failure, not to be a painful loser.

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Despite David’s involvement, everyone has remained away from “bitter grapes”, the general consensus being that it is too bitter and cruel to cause laughter. This can come from a wider erroneous interpretation of “Seinfeld”. The series, one might remember, is from the observational humor of Jerry Seinfeld, who extracted the jokes of the daily events with which most people can identify. He also exploited elements of daily meanness to which we are all sometimes in the grip. The “Seinfeld” television show increased meanness, ensuring that each of its four tracks (themselves based on real people in David’s life) were all shallow and horrible individuals. “Seinfeld”, however, presented them all as perhaps relatable, so some could have made the mistake of thinking that they were kind and human.

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“Sour Grapes”, by being a feature film, straight cut in the darkness of David’s ethics, avoiding relat -taught “Seinfeld” relative and giving only the public only superficial meanness. It is similar to “Seinfeld” only in its philosophy. Without a certain degree of self -awareness, the “bitter grapes” play more like a tragedy. Anyone can see how pathetic and hateful the main characters are.

On one of the DVD audio comments for David’s HBO series “Curb your enthusiasm,“David (which is played in the series) explains that the set decorators logically put a” bitter grapes “poster on the wall of his office. David asked that the poster be removed. He did not want to remember the artistic and commercial failure with which he was involved.

Needless to say, David has not made a film since.