It is hard to see at first sight why so human a thing as leisure and larkiness should always have a religious origin.

For all its larkiness, "Assassination Vacation" means to be a serious book about a troublesome subject.

But, indeed, this Imperial debauch has in it something worse than the mere larkiness which is my present topic; it has an element of real self-flattery and of sin.

Director Ron Shelton ( Bull Durham ) is a veteran of successful sports movies, but this one lacks the "off-the-wall larkiness" of his previous efforts (Jay Carr, the Boston Globe ).

Even when accusing himself of mediocrity, even in the depths of depression, his virtuoso speeches have a vein of ho-ho larkiness: he always has enough energy to take off an Oxford drawl or a Middlesex whine or a northern vowel.