Those Brit critics, recalling Laurie's days of the slightly undignified do-what-you-have-to-to-get-ahead routine of a young British actor on the way up are past him, like to imply that his new life — what some of them have called his “reinvention” — as an American star has only come about because of his days in the Brit-com boot camp of the 1980s and '90s.