American Splendor
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Movie Reviews of American Splendor
Movie Review: original, funny, banal, pathetic, and uplifting
Summary: 5 Stars
I was given a copy of Pekar's first anthology in 1985, and I read it so many times I practically memorized it. The great thing was that it had down to earth stories about normal people in a nowhere city, but they came through with a pathos and sense of striving that were throbbing with life. Not much happens, but they leave an imprint, if you like good dense fiction. Pekar is his milieu, however egomanaical, maladjusted, and sad he seems. The stories range from reasoning about his non-existent career while buying bread to hanging out with a horrible, clueless woman for sex because he is so lonely. All in a declining rustbelt city.
I wasn't sure what to expect with this film, but I bought it anyway. From the start, I thought it was completely successful and a work of art that stood on its own. You have the real Harvey Pekar as narrator, who occasionally appears to comment from a kind of inner sanctum mixing comics and the film set, and you have a wonderful actor, Paul Giamatti. Then, you also have them watching themselves in a play and then on David Letterman. It was a strange double or triple reflection of reality.
The story is very well put together. It starts when Pekar is getting divorced (2nd time), shows his life as a working-class intellectual, and then how he falls in love with someone as strange yet endearing as himself, Joyce. Then, he survives cancer and even accepts a child into his life, which with his loudly announced vasectomy (on his first date with his wife) he was adamant never to do. All through it, Pekar strives to develop his art, comic book writing that others illustrate. He does his thing through sheer gall - and hey, if he doesn't, who would? Every freelancer will identify with this.
Giamatti really gets Pekar: the constantly worried brow, the shuffling slump with his constant companion (a mild depression), yet also the good mind that is entirely self-taught. It is brilliant. But the feel of the film also reflects what I have witnessed: there is even a scene where one character is introduced, Toby (whom I did not recall from the comic), and for a second I was convinced he was someone I really knew. (You read this, Chris?) I had to watch that scene several times, and even got my kids to watch the "nerd" as he defined himself - we all laughed, but felt sympathy as well. That is typical Pekar.
Someday, I believe, Pekar's work will be regarded as genuine literature that portrays the age, much I would wager, as do Chaucer or Froissart. People will do Phds on it, but I prefer to simply enjoy it for what it is. Warmly recommended.
Movie Review: Brilliant, Hilarious, and Sad!
Summary: 5 Stars
"American Splendor" is based on the underground comic book seris. Unlike "Spiderman" and "Hulk", this movie is more about real life then about superpowers. There is even a comment in this film about how superhero comics have to appeal to kids, and underground comics could be more about life. Much like this movie. This movie doesn't have kid appeal, and it is more about life. But a comic book movie doesn't have to have special effects, action sequences, and strong violence to make it good, and that is proven with "American Splendor." I was told about it by somebody I know(who was actually in the movie. He's the guy that introduces Pekar to Crumb at the garage sale) and after he gave it such a positive review, I knew that I had to see this for myself. I thought that it was a brilliant, dramatic, funny, character study,and one of the best movies on 2003. Paul Giamatti plays Harvey Pekar, a depressed file clerk, who works for Mr. Boats, and a friend Toby Radloff, a nerd who thinks that "Revenge of the Nerds" is an uplifting movie. At a garage sale, he is introduced by Pahls to artist Robert Crumb. After drawing stick figure animation about everyday problems in life, Harvey gives them to Crumb to make good drawings of them, which he then sells into a comic book seris called "American Splendor." Harvey has never been very good with women, after being divorced twice, but then gets a letter from a comic book store owner named Joyce Brabner, who wants a direct copy of the eight issue. The two finally meet after a while and get married a week later. But Joyce wants to do something that matters, and does not want to see Harvey becoming famous, and making apperences on "Late Night with David Letterman." She goes away, and while away Harvey discovers that he has cancer. The two decide to make a comic about the problem, and try to get through this serious time, while Harvey rethinks about his veiws on the world, and everything that he lives for.
I really loved "American Splendor." Throughout the film, you could see the changes in Harvey, and also how he doesn't change. You would think that marriage would make him change his lifestyle quickly, but he says that he likes the way that his house is messy. His complaints towards everyday problems are hilarious, especially this one scene where Harvey complains that if your on line in a supermarket behind an old Jewish women, you'll be there for a long time. The movie has sweet scenes, and it also has comical scenes, and it was shunned by the Oscars. This could be a best picture nominee, and a best actor to Paul Giamatti.
ENJOY!
Rated R for language.
Movie Review: A fascinating underground figure
Summary: 5 Stars
Like Crumb and Ghost World (both great films in their own right), American Splendor focuses on a subculture that is seldom glimpsed by the mainstream --that of underground comic book writers. American Splendor is the name of a comic book created by Harvey Pekar, played in this film by Paul Giamatti, who expertly captures the personality and nuances of Pekar. We know this because this film is part documentary, with the real Pekar (and other characters dramatized in the film) giving commentary throughout. This technique of mixing the real with the fictionalized works well for this movie, which is about a person who is almost obsessively introspective and constantly wondering about his identity. Although he is a counterculture hero of sorts, Pekar lived most of his life in an extremely low key manner --as a file clerk for a VA hospital. Most of his comic books were derived from the people and events he experienced at work and around the streets of Cleveland. At the start of the film, Pekar's wife has left him, complaining that she cannot stand the "plebeian life" anymore. Although Pekar himself is hardly content with his own life, he also seems to require it. At one point he muses that he'd be lost without his work routine. Later, one of his female fans named Joyce (Hope Davis) writes to Pekar and they get married almost immediately, "skipping the whole courtship thing," as Joyce puts it. Joyce is a fellow misfit, and they seem like a perfect match. The strength of this film is in the way it captures the whole sense of life (to borrow a phrase from Ayn Rand) of Harvey Pekar. Before seeing this, I had never heard of him or his comic book, but I am always intrigued by people who live on the fringes and create something original from their unconventional vantage points. Pekar reveals himself as a perverse sort of character who seems to need a degree of conflict, even misery, in his life. As he gains in popularity, it seems likely that he could, like his friend and collaborator Robert Crumb, have launched a career out of his art and quit his day job, but he doesn't do this until the very end when he formally retires. He appeared several times on David Letterman's Late Night show, but finally resented the way the host used him for laughs. I enjoyed the scene of his final appearance on the show, when he publicly insults the smug Letterman; I wish more people would do things like that. Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, helped by the cast and the actual characters of course, have created a masterpiece in this multifaceted portrayal of a unique modern artist.Movie Review: The best movie I've seen all year
Summary: 5 Stars
In the underground comic book series "American Splendor," Cleveland file clerk Harvey Pekar writes about his own bizarre-yet-humdrum life. The movie "American Splendor" establishes the 'bizarre biopic' as a new genre of film, taking the basic premise behind the comic book and spinning it out even further: actor Paul Giamatti plays Pekar, but Pekar himself also appears on-screen. At one point Pekar is interviewed with his friend Toby, while the actors playing them take a break from filming in the back of the frame. The film sometimes whimsically takes on the flat graphic look of a comic book as well, as when the `real' Harvey is interviewed on a set featuring two-dimensional props placed on a flat white background-the real Harvey thus appearing less `real' in 2 dimensions than Giamatti (the `actor' Harvey) appears in 3. Which is the "real" Harvey? Is it Giamatti, the actor who plays him? The author Harvey Pekar, who actually appears in the film as himself? The comic-strip character Harvey, who is sometimes animated in the film? It sounds confusing, but the film is so tightly constructed that it's fun rather than bewildering, an offbeat commentary on the differences between "real" life as it is lived and as we observe it.Giamatti turns in an outstanding performance in the year's best cast. He has Pekar perfectly, down to the oddball way his right upper lip is raised in a perpetual sneer, while his bushy left eyebrow descends in a terrifying squint. Hope Davis as his wife Joyce is deadpan yet hilarious, and she has the best two lines in the film: one when she proposes marriage (which I will not spoil for you), and one when she declares with absolute conviction in her voice that the final speech in the movie "Revenge of the Nerds" to be the equivalent of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Although this movie is quite unconventional on its surface, underneath it is actually rather charming and sentimental: it's the wacked-out true `love' story describing how oddball file clerk Harvey Pekar became famous as an underground cartoonist, finds true love (meaning love with fights, frustrations, and general insanity rather than the bland type), and overcomes cancer. In the final moments of the film we see the real Harvey retire from his fileclerk existence, hoping for a peaceful retirement on the proceeds of the film. Despite Harvey's rough bulldog interface, you will be rooting for him.
Movie Review: Funny, disturbing, and highly creative.
Summary: 5 Stars
American Splendor is a movie with so many layers, reality starts to smudge and swirl, and bearings get lost. It is startlingly well told, masterfully directed, and engaging on a number of levels. But there is also an incipient sadness (and madness) to it, as we watch colorful, creative, and lost human beings--lost just like the rest of us--in an insane, confusing world.The movie is the story of Harvey Pekar, a man who doesn't quite fit into the flow of life. Not that he really wants to or cares to, mind you. After all, this is a guy who quits college after two semesters because the pressure of a math requirement was becoming too stressful. Would that we could all be so self-directed and wise. He wins and loses life's small and large battles on his own terms, making dear friends who seem enchanted with his otherworldly crankiness and stumbling through relationships with women who seem to be a combination of sublime understanding and bitchiness. After all, how could any self-respecting modern woman want to live with a guy who is content to be a file clerk in a VA hospital, and whose apartment looks like Rodney Dangerfield's basement? (Okay, I'm just assuming that Rodney Dangerfield has a crap filled basement. Indulge me.)
Harvey's other passions, driven by his love of art, music, and creativity, are record-collecting and writing autobiographical comics (with the help of a legion of clever artists, including his friend Crumb). It is engaging to watch this clever, smart everyman, with more problems than anyone deserves to have, find a way to speak to the world, to reveal his soul. And it is also a wonder to see his friends and associates gather round both to celebrate him and also take care of him when things get grim.
A special word needs to go to the directors. American Splendor is a masterful blending of live action, comic books, animation, snippets of real life (with the real Harvey and friends), and a lovely eye for humanity and what really matters in life. I went out and bought this DVD. Will I ever watch it again? Maybe. But, really, I don't have to. The movie will resonate inside me for a long time. What I'm glad about is that DVDs ought to hold together long enough that my grandkids will see it. (My son has already watched it with me and loved it just as much.)