‘George Carlin’s American Dream’ finds the right words to capture the comedy icon

George Carlin rose to prominence as a stand-up comedian in the 1960s and ’70s, reinventing himself multiple times over a career that reveled in the use of language and took sharp aim at society. The complexity of that life and resonance of those words, dirty or otherwise, is neatly distilled into “George Carlin’s American Dream,” a perceptive two-part look at a comedy legend who, as W. Kamau Bell observes, “still seems to be talking to us.”