But not only is it paced at a gallop, its characters have also been honed to clarity, and its jokes now eschew the thoughtful or sardonic snort: they're played for a straightforward laugh.
This would suggest a straightforward interpretation, whereby the present laughs at the future, or, at any rate, at its own fear of what is to come.
Sure, the company is planning to give the next model a more straightforward title, but the entrepreneur laughs off the Icarus comparisons.
He sounds infectiously, incongruously chipper as he says this, cheerfully laughing at the straightforward cause-and-effect relationship between the album's reception and his reaction to it.
The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "a fairly straightforward episode where the biggest laugh comes from Homer being able to talk to penguins and Bart trying to impress his classmates by doing The Bartman".
Cucinelli asked Father Cassian how much money he had raised toward the renovation so far, then laughed at the monk's straightforward response: nothing.
If its charm seems straightforward — Harry's cute accent, Charlie's maniacal laugh — its unprecedented global popularity is mysterious.
To the people around him, Enrique Marquez Jr. seemed like a straightforward guy with a silly streak and a shaky laugh.
Two sentences later, people will laugh at something you thought was pretty straightforward.
My first question was, "How can a man with your blunt and straightforward personality be elected to anything in a city like New Orleans?" Moon laughed and never answered the question completely.
