Will Haney (Jon Hamm) is making an electric car calling it Howard. The PR manager Nathan Flomm (Larry David) refuses to market the car due to the name and sells back his 10% of the company. The company becomes a giant success and Nathan becomes a laughing stock. Ten years later, he's working on Martha's Vineyard under the name Rolly DaVore and with a different look. Everybody seems to like him but nobody knows his true past. Will shows up having bought a large property but he doesn't recognize Nathan.

I don't watch Curb although I know Larry David's character. The premise is silly but it does lead to some good poetic justice. Instead of electric cars, I'd do the iPhone. The electric car looks silly in a bad way. Instead of Siri, people would ask Howard. It's a cheaper and funnier joke. After the initial bearded first act, Larry David returns to looking like Larry David. There are some good laughs and there are a lot of A-list actors. At some point, Rolly does get more frustratingly selfish than hilariously stupid. It's a balancing act of me liking or disliking him. For some reason, Will's reveal of wanting to repay him actually make me like him more. At that point, his stupidity is self-destructive and that's funny to me. For Curb's fans, I think this would be a blast. As a Curb non-fan, I like this half of the time and I find it tolerable in the other half.

Nathan (Larry David) works for Electron Motors, an up and coming electric car company. When the owner (Bill Hader) decides to name the car "Howard" Nathan objects and quits the company. When the "Howard" becomes the next greatest innovation, Nathan become the brunt of national humor. Nathan changes his name to go live a quiet life on Martha's Vineyard...until his former boss decides to live there too.

The comedy was light and the Chicago music was heavy. I enjoyed some of the initial humor, but as the film went on some of the fresh humor became stale as they ran out of new ways to make fun of Nathan's neat compulsion. Howard inadvertently becomes a nemesis to Jaspar (J.B. Smoove) a bit that I liked. The film was able to tie together bits and pieces, i.e. circle around, something I expect in good writing. The problem was that the jokes were not that good and the sexual humor wasn't that funny.

Works as a rental.

Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity. Sex talk.

I've never been a fan of Larry David. In most of the stuff where I've seen him he comes across as weird. Even so, "Clear History" is a very funny movie. This is mostly because David's character is basically every character that Woody Allen plays. This is most apparent in his conversations with Liev Schreiber's menacing Chechen. You just gotta appreciate the effort that David's vengeful milquetoast puts into his scheme, even tricking Kate Hudson's character about his identity. I actually thought that the funniest character was Michael Keaton's quarry operator. Basically, Larry David is no great comedian, but he can be funny when he tries. I recommend this movie.