Jeffrey Tambor is particularly funny as a man who sees no reason to be embarrassed. We rate his George Bluth Sr. highly: the less troubled he looks, the more exasperating the family becomes.
Fi1m perspective
George Bluth Sr. looks comfortable when he has little business being comfortable. In Arrested Development (2003), Jeffrey Tambor makes that ease aggravating enough to sustain a joke without having to announce it. We laughed at his composure because the family's predicament gives him so little excuse for it. Around him, Will Arnett's Gob strains to maintain his importance and Tony Hale's Buster struggles simply to occupy space; Tambor need not compete with either, and the contrast is a considerable part of the pleasure.
The earlier breakthrough was Hank Kingsley in The Larry Sanders Show (1992), with Garry Shandling. That part established Tambor's gift for letting vulnerability remain visible in an absurd character, a useful qualification for the self-absorbed authority figures he is so often asked to play. As Sully in There's Something About Mary (1998), he belongs to another comedy we recommend for its performances, with a caveat about its slack two-hour length.
It would be a mistake to give Tambor sole credit for the restraint in Arrested Development. Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat's smaller reactions also keep the ensemble from becoming a competition to be heard. What we value in Tambor here is his willingness to be less strenuous than the people beside him; George remains irritating without making the performance exhausting. He also plays George's gentler twin. Neither part can do much about the programme's storytelling, which can grow tiring in its later stretches, and our affection for the performances does not make that complaint disappear.
Transparent (2014) moved him into a leading dramatic role as Maura Pfefferman. It is a significant turn from the ensemble comedies, though the capacity to play vulnerability was already there in Hank. Start with Arrested Development, and pay attention to the man who seems least inconvenienced by being a Bluth.
Biography
Jeffrey Tambor is an American actor. He was born on 8 July 1944 in San Francisco, California, and studied at San Francisco State University and Wayne State University.
Tambor is known for playing George Bluth Sr. (and his twin brother Oscar Bluth) on the series Arrested Development (2003–2006, 2013, 2018–2019). His other television roles include Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998) and Maura Pfefferman on Transparent (2014–2017), for which he won two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. Film appearances include Sid Garner in The Hangover (2009) and its sequels, Tom Manning in Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), and Georgy Malenkov in The Death of Stalin (2017).
