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100Everything you fear might be true about how our government works--or doesn't--becomes hilarious fodder for Veep's biting satire.
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100A hilarious new sitcom about a female vice president of the United States, Selina Meyer, played with insanely good timing by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
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91Louis-Dreyfus won Emmys for both "Seinfeld" and "The New Adventures of Old Chrstine," and seems the best candidate to win another for her work here.
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90Iannucci and his cast are as deft with a wonky policy joke as they are with good old-fashioned bathroom humor and Louis-Dreyfus shines, throwing herself, as she so often did on "Seinfeld" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine," physically into the role.
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90Thanks to Louis-Dreyfus, and the show's remarkable knack for dialogue and timing, Veep is instantly engaging and outrageously fun.
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90Every actor nails their lines, which keeps Veep moving at a brisk pace. In fact, the episodes seem to end so quickly, you'll wish they lasted an hour.
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88The comedy here, as with Elaine, comes from watching Louis-Dreyfus's sophisticated, furiously sharp timing applied to a character who has the intelligence of a finch. [30 Apr 2012, p.35]
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88As it turns out, Veep might be even more hilarious if it didn't hit so uncomfortably close to the truth.
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83The ensemble works incredibly well together--in marked contrast to Selina's dysfunction, competitive staff--and there's a briskness and intelligence to the whole shebang.
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83Louis-Dreyfus isn't quite believable as a vice president--even a sitcom VP whose lack of gravitas is the show's central joke. But she's still a joy to watch, especially when she shows off that famous gift for physical comedy.
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80Veep is a show, though, that finds great comedy in the space between that idealism and the reality they face every day.
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80In its focus on such details, the show finds humor in the contradiction between the staff's renowned arena and the petty ways they get things done.
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Apr 20, 201280The supporting cast is very strong--Tony Hale (perhaps best known for "Arrested Development"), in particular, excels as Selina's goofy and limpetlike personal aide--the various internecine plotlines are building well; and no one is allowed to riff uncontrolled.
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80With Louis-Dreyfus inhabiting the central role, the writing shines.
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80Even if you don't particularly feel for Selina--you don't root for her, particularly, or against her--there is continual pleasure in watching the actress make her go.
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80Much more conventional than Girls in its savagely profane workplace humor, its bad behavior recalls Curb Your Enthusiasm while the setting is reminiscent of The Larry Sanders Show in its hysterical behind-the-curtain peek at dysfunction and incompetence in high places.
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80As a workplace comedy with a political bent Veep is both fun and funny, its nonpartisan position more a missed opportunity than fatal flaw.
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75The show chronicles the more humorous than glamorous challenges encountered by Meyer, whose full-time job us self-preservation.
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75Veep has some funny lines and sight gags during the course of doing its dirty Washington business.
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75[A] cynical, hilarious and profane political satire.
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70It's still an acerbically entertaining show that I'll keep watching for now because of the strong cast, because of its gift for the obscene bon mot (a Selina speech edited for political concerns by the White House is said to be "pencil-fucked"), and because I hope it will grow into something more distinctive.
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60It's all rather weightless: just your usual sitcom-style misunderstandings and bruised egos and "complications ensue," with no sense that anything larger is at stake.
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50The result is overly broad and narrow at the same time.
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50What few laughs there are represent a triumph of acting skill over authorial sloth in a show that is more silly than funny--and more dull than silly.
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42Some amusing lines, but otherwise a disappointing misfire.
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40She's not funny, the aide is told--a line that elicited in this viewer a stream of unstoppable thoughts about what was not funny about this show, which is a lot, all of which ended up pointing, inexorably, to its writers. What saves the show is Ms. Louis-Dreyfus's Selina.
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40Veep sparks to life only occasionally.
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40Veep simply isn't particularly fresh or funny, and most of its jokes are telegraphed from a long way away.
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40It's too easy, too much like a series of safe sketches that play to all the stereotypes everyone in politics claims describe the other side.
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25Mistaking vulgarity for comic edge and very thinly stretched punnery for wit, Veep is less a trenchant satire about contemporary politics than it is a relentlessly mean-spirited spectacle about crummy people.