Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing (2005) *** 1/2 (out of 4)George Carlin's thirteenth special for HBO ranks as one of his best but, then again, was he ever not great? This time out he tackles humans and how ugly and stupid they really are. This includes suicide, torture, sleeping with dead things and in one of the funniest bits he goes off on seeing obese people together.It's funny watching this eleven years after it was released and seeing just how brilliant Carlin was. The legend would die three years after this was released so he didn't get to see the current human nature and there's a priceless joke here about PC liberals that is just so more truer today then when he said it. Not to mention the obesity rates in America.Carlin comes out on fire with one of the fastest monologues that you're ever going to hear. It's amazing to see how rapid-fire Carlin is saying this stuff yet he is never off note or missing a step. The show itself is full of one great joke after another. I've always thought Carlin's humor worked so best because it was a thinking man's show. In other words, Carlin gets humor out of his deep thoughts on his subjects and he fully exploits that here.I'm not going to ruin any of the jokes because you should go into the show not knowing them but there are many classics here.

We had a gasoline shortage in 2000 and in August of 2006 and now we have yet another gasoline problem. I predict that we will soon be paying $5 per gallon and everything will become prohibitively expensive.People, if you own a bicycle, take care. Lock it in your garage with the front wheel removed. You may have to use it to go to work. If a couple owns a business, look for a bicycle built for two.In the meantime, the solution is TRICYCLES, for those of us who never learned to ride a two-wheeler. Tricycles don't use gas. Four of them can fit into a parking space. The effort required to pedal it would cause people to lose weight and build muscle. Think how this would benefit marriages. Couples on the verge of divorce would reunite; they would see less of each other, thereby eliminating some of the reasons for arguments. It's hard to engage in adultery since a tricycle doesn't have a back seat.The children, taken care of by a stay-at-home mother, would have to learn all the games we played as children to keep ourselves amused. We played Tag, Ring A Leeveeo, Statues, Simon Says, Touch Football, Stick Ball, Jacks, etc., which prevented the childhood obesity which is so prevalent today.Renee Sinrod, Clearwater, Florida

I agree with one of the earlier posts that ppl must be getting offended 'cause he's officially made fun of everyone and if he hadn't yet, then this routine touched that last nerve on the so-called "hard-core" supporters that think that his best yrs are behind him.My favorite is one guy who thought that after he started attacking religion that his routine went down hill and why? Because he's some full-of-himself, "moralistic", religious nut himself and got offended... Obviously he didn't take in the message George has been sending all along... to take a step back, realize what's going on around us, and most importantly, LAUGH!!!! This was a very ingeniously performed routine that took a shot at all the ills of pop-culture, the morbid curiosity of your average person, and ultimately the extreme human behavior(exclusive to us so-called "civilized" beings) that shows how primitive we really are...And for those of you that don't think there's punchlines how 'bout when he talks 'bout "scarfing" and throws in the pun, "think of how many kids are trying to pull this one off" Also he touches on several current topics like obesity, stupidity, and consumerism that are just becoming too much of an issue to ignore, I mean the whole "pretty soon all you'll need to get into college is a pencil" is so true, I mean I know that i'm not as "enlightened" or "educated" as I should be and I know that if I had the same study habits/dedication towards school just 20yrs ago there's no way I'd be able to get a college degree but now i'm just a couple months away from graduating college, just going to show that they're definitely lowering the standards, I mean I'm no dummy either, but still, getting into and graduating college is becoming less of a big deal 'cause the best way to help "educate" the ppl is to lower the standards....The obesity part... OMG... Being in Europe now, yes there are obese ppl, but nothing like the "interstate buses" you see in the US, especially in the Southeastern states...And as for consumerism, while he's touched on the subject several times the "spending money we don't have on things we don't need" is just becoming more and more evident in society! I could go on and on, but the ultimate genius of this bit is how society is "going to the dogs" and he touches on this not only in the Suicide Reality TV bit, but also the Eliminating Electricity to bring us back to primitive times and finally the Nationwide Natural Disaster bit as well as just the whole routine shows us what's wrong with society and that it's only getting worse, so what should we do about it... SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE RIDE!!!!

Extremely few comedians are successful, even fewer for more than a year or two and the majority of those few that are still working the large venues, who prove themselves to be other than just some flash-in-the-pan dressed up in an ill-fitting suit of success by an aggressive publicity team and a gullible, entertainment starved audience; usually build their careers on one or two jokes that they've turned into their shtick: they have a quirky personality that is charming or, at least, familiar. Essentially they're one-trick-ponies with long legs. This isn't something I was really thinking about in much detail until I watched the exception to all these rules: George Carlin in Life Is Worth Losing. Here is a man who is nearing seventy years old (as of this writing), his fiftieth year in show business and he presents us with his finest, most polished work of all. He is one of those exceptionally rare breeds, in any given professional field, who not only improves with time, but substantially so to an extent that you clearly see all of his work until now has been the foundation for the masterpiece he offers us now. Not one to be particularly impressed by the vast majority of so-called "great" things, it took me a while after my first viewing of Life Is Worth Losing to absorb what I had seen and several repeated viewings shortly thereafter to understand I was witnessing a truly great comedian, a genius, THE master of his craft. In a world where the vast majority of "great entertainment" is hyped up bullsh*t and mediocrity, a passing fad at best that sours on your second taste if not turning bitterly toxic, George Carlin is a man who shows us what real, adult comedy should be: a mixture of cleverly constructed fun and intelligent material that makes you think about our comically tragic existence. This is George's best performance and material so far, his most thoughtful, thought out, thought provoking and heartfelt.I really expected to see and hear universal applause and praise for this great work. Instead, I was surprised to hear and read so many negative reviews about this masterpiece. Surely these can't be the same George Carlin fans who loved his work before. Especially those who said this work was "bitter". If anything I found his latest offering to be a lot less angry than most of his previous work and more thoughtful. Then I realized what all the fuss was about: in this performance George is holding up the biggest mirror he's held up so far. He's forcing more Americans to look (and laugh if they have the courage) at themselves than he ever has before. He leaves very few stones unturned in his satirical offering. For a start he talks about a lot of Americans right off the bat when he discusses obesity, as a third of Americans are classified as medically obese and about half of those as morbidly obese, according to the latest American Medical Association studies. He also talks about mindless consumerism. Between these two subjects he's covered the vast majority of Americans. And since Americans are becoming more dimwitted and righteous, the bulk of them will not laugh at themselves, the purpose of intelligent humor but prefer the sadistic, mean spirited "humor" they see on television (which George satirizes in "The All-Suicide TV Channel") or read in those idiotic emails too many people forward to everyone in their address book with titles like "10 jokes about rag-heads" or "Stop complaining you homeless person". (Some of these atrocious emails that preach intolerance are erroneously attributed to George Carlin but in fact are written by other people, none of whom have the courage to take credit for these awful, embarrassingly written pieces. Sources: see www.snopes.com or www.georgecarlin.com) If you watch "Life is WorthLosing" for just the opening and closing segments, you will see pure brilliance. The opening segment "A Modern Man" is a work of genius and you will be awestruck by George's mastery of the English language as well as his selection of timely material. The closing segment "Coast to Coast Emergency" is actually a very hopeful piece but I think too many people get confused by it because he's discussing the bitterness of the average person and is revealing that the solution to most people's unhappiness is to rid themselves of their own bitterness. Don't listen to the critics of this work, it's a fantastic piece. Typical of the vast majority of naysayers, they are really talking about themselves when they describe George as "bitter". It's why it is always a risk to tell the truth because most people want to kill the messenger that brings them bad news, especially when that "news" (intentional ignorance actually) is about themselves.This is George Carlin at his polished, intellectual best. It is a masterpiece of comic genius that you will want to add to your library and watch again and again; especially after one of those too frequently increasing moments of realizing the dumbing-down of your fellow countrymen and women is an alarming reality.