Rating: 
Summary: Who is Harvey Pekar?
Review: American Splendor, its title ironic, is a clever journey through the life and loves of comic Harvey Pekar. Who is Harvey Pekar? Unless you're a super geek (or someone who really knows comics well), the name is probably unknown. David Letterman described him, ironically, as "living the American Dream." In all respect, Pekar's life is far more colorful (and yet more mundane) than the American Dream which guides ordinary folks towards achieving greatness. Harvey Pekar, as played by Paul Giamatti, was not concerned with transcendance and greatness. For Pekar, it was ordinary life that was the complete stuff. Logically, he wrote comic strips about his trials at work, his troubles with women, and the challenges of finding the right line at the supermarket. Through it all, Harvey battles fear of intimacy, and among other demons, cancer, all while remaining very ordinary - bald, socially awkward, and testy. Harvey Pekar is not the thing of Hollywood legends. He also would not choose to be a Hollywood legend. The movie itself, however, inspire legends in its own right, not in the forms of grand deeds, but instead in everyday unlikely heroes. Splicing both real footage and fictitious posturing as well as the real Harvey and his colorful comic strip, American Splendor is a film that is unlike any other. It's not inherently deep or spellbinding, but when the credits roll, one can't help but feel moved by a clever story about a bald, awkward everyman. Harvey Pekar is an unlikely hero. But when the movie concludes, you'll have no trouble cheering for him. For something completely different, pick up American Splendor...and enjoy the ordinary life.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely wonderful story
Review: I really can't say enough about this movie. It is an amazing portrait of an Everyman struggling first with the mundanities of his own life, and then later with an odd sort of fame, cancer, and the creation of a family. Paul Giamatti is absolutely fantastic as Harvey Pekar, and Hope Davis is wonderful as his wife. As you see Pekar navigate his way through life's obstacles - from an old lady in front of him in the grocery store to struggling with marital troubles, cancer, his dead-end job and the adoption of a troubled little girl, you can't help but feel uplifted, especially at the end. A review of this movie when it came out said that Pekar is not really a pessimist - he is actually the penultimate optimist, because he keeps believing in the fundamental goodness of the world, even after he's been disappointed. His take on life, marriage and fatherhood isn't your average view, but it is entertaining and in the end, it all works out. Personally, I thought it was great to see a movie that sent a message that you don't have to be beautiful to find real love, you don't have to be rich to have a happy home, fame isn't all it's cracked up to be, and your life doesn't have to be perfect for you to be happy. This is one of the few well-done movies I've seen lately with a truly happy ending - and usually you only get happy endings with unwatchably stupid movies. I wish there were more movies being made like this. See it!
Rating:
Summary: Unusually good
Review: This is the kind of movie I wouldn't think I would like. But it is pretty good. Kind of dreary at times but entertaining anyway. Keep an eye out for one of the Letterman appearances that is clearly fake. (They only show the back of Dave's head and its definitely not the real set.)
Rating: 
Summary: Meh
Review: I can't even remember how it ends. It's an ok movie, really, but unless you're into the comic, or a follower of underground comics or whatever, It's just a biography of a guy who made a comic about mundane everyday life. I dunno what is supposed to be interesting about the story or the characters, but if you're totally determined to see it, try before you buy. Borrow it from a friend. 2 stars for its boring but honest story.
Rating:
Summary: Paul Giamatti and This Movie is Brilliant.....
Review: Harvey Pekar, a well known and well apraised underground comic book writer. Not only does Harvey write the story's of American Splendor but is also the star, giving the birth to the first real person to be a comic book superhero. He has every superpower that you and I have. Poor dishwashing skills, a job that sucks the life out of him, bad attitude....heck, he even gets cancer. This movie is based on Harvey's comic books. Harvey is played by Paul Giamatti, who does a great job. How he didn't get an Oscar Nod is beyond me. The way the movie is made can also be called groundbreaking. It mixes in Harvey, narrating and he also does interview breaks durning the movie, and Paul Giamatti who plays Harvey. The movie also as some inventive ideas. One has Giamatti standing in line at a grocery store, while a comic book version of him is yelling at him that is voiced by the real Hervy Pekar. Very cool stuff. I thought it would be hard for me to get into someone who is always deppressed, angry, and simply just down...but it really hepled out to see Harvey in the movie. To watch him and hear him talk, I identified with him and made him that much more real. The movie is a must see for everyone, regardless if they don't like comics or never heard of Harvey Pekar. Now to the DVD. The film that is on the disc is worth by itself. The extras are brief....trailer, DVD-ROM stuff, and a too short documenty. The picture does the trick although some grain was to be seen. The music matches the mood of the movie but sometimes overpowers the narration. Get this movie for the movie not the supplements or other specs.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, But Not Representative of the Comic
Review: This is one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen this year. Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis are a hoot as the underground artists Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner. The mixture of documentary, animation and straightforward narrative are genuinely innovative and thought-provoking. This very much reminds me of Terry Zwigoff's "Crumb", a film which is mentioned in passing in this movie (and in this film the actor James Urbaniak gives an uncannily accurate performance as Crumb.) The combination of ironic distance and compassion in recounting their subjects' lives are the same in both "Crumb" and "American Splendor." The only flaw in "American Splendor" (if it even is a flaw) is that the film is more interesting than the comic series it is based on. Pekar's work is drearily naturalistic little slices of life. There's more humor and pathos in the film; the comic strikes me as, quite frankly, being the work of a really depressed guy. If Pekar were more aggressive like his friend Crumb, his comics would be more fun to read. And Harvey is kind of harsh on David Letterman, who in the end was only trying to help.
Rating: 
Summary: Oddball Movie
Review: American Splendor tells the story of a man who leads a less than exemplar life. Harvey Pekar is the author behind the comic book series known as American Splendor. This movie is based on a true story. For the first half hour or so I kept asking myself what I had gotten myself into. I was like, "why do I want to sit here and watch a movie about some slob?" Eventually, the movie started to turn into an almost voyeuristic adventure. "REVENGE OF THE NERDS!" *giggles* Really, I was kicking myself in the beginning for having picked out the movie, but right around the time Harvey met Joyce it started to get interesting. If anything, that movie can serve as a useful tool to make anyone feel good about themselves. How bad can life get? That movie definitely is a very intimate portrayal of life at the bottom of the well. Even though Harvey disgusted me mostly, at times I felt pity for him and even anger at David Letterman for bringing Harvey on his show to use simply as a punching bag. When I witnessed that, David Letterman instantly became scum right along with Howard Stern, for poking fun at someone who really doesn't know he's being poked on. What makes matters worse is that I'm almost led to believe that Harvey is the way he was because of some mental illness, a slowness, perhaps, and that he can't help the way he is and that he was being taken advantage of. Also, I was very satisfied at the film for allowing me to see the real Harvery Pekar behind the scenes. In the end, it was truly a bizarre subject for a movie. I wouldn't put it on my favorite movie list simply because it WAS so bizarre, but I feel that everyone should see it once just to get a taste of a different kind of cinema. The rest of the characters have their own sick charms as well, in particular the monotone nerd, Toby Radloff. HA! That guy just cracked me up. The film was a stunning peak into an oddball's life!
Rating:
Summary: rather good
Review: A film by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini "American Splendor" is a rather peculiar movie, though a fairly good one. "American Splendor" is about the life and times of Harvey Pekar. Harvey is not the sort of man you would ordinarily expect to have a movie made about, Harvey is also the author of the comic book of the same title. "American Splendor", the comic, is not your usual kind of comic. There are no superheroes and nobody wears a spandex bodysuit. The comic is about real life: specifically the real life of Harvey Pekar himself. This movie is an adaptation of the comic, so it is a film about a comic about a real man. With that in mind, "American Splendor" mixes several styles of film narrative. We have the basic story of Harvey Pekar's life, but the story is actually narrated by the real Harvey Pekar who acknowledges when Harvey (Paul Giamatti) appears on screen "That's me." Then he goes on to say that it is only an actor playing him and that they don't really look alike. Since this is a movie based on a comic, we also get pauses where the film switches to a comic book frame (or moves from the frame into a scene), which works rather well in this film (in comparison to "The Hulk", which did not work quite as well as it did here). There is also a documentary style to the film as it moves from a movie scene to the real Harvey and the real Joyce being interviewed. While these styles, perhaps, should not work in the film, they do and rather well at that. The film truly begins (there is a scene before this with a young Harvey) with Harvey getting dumped by his second wife. This sends him into a funk, but he meets a man named Crumb who is a talented artist and eventually becomes successful and famous. When Crumb visits Harvey a couple of years later Harvey has the idea for writing a new style of comic book, one about the ordinary, day to day stuff (this was revolutionary at the time) and Crumb decides to do the artwork for the book. It is called "American Splendor" and despite being a critical success and an underground favorite it does not permit Harvey to leave his job as a file clerk. What the comic does give Harvey, other than some limited acclaim, is that it is the impetuous for Joyce (Hope Davis) to write Harvey and eventually meet and marry him. They have a rather strange relationship, and though it may not be based on love, it seems to work (both in the film's story as well as in the documentary portions). We trace Harvey's life through his co-workers (an interesting cast of characters), through his appearances on the David Letterman show (where we see the actual footage, but when Harvey steps off the stage it switches over to the film Harvey again), through his year of cancer and up through the present. This was a surprisingly interesting film, and it worked more successfully than I expected. It will not make my list of top ten films, but it was good and had some excellent performances (Giamatti should have been recognized by Oscar for this one). I'll recommend this one with the "Good stuff" rating. It's not great, but it is good.
Rating:
Summary: Good actors, Good story
Review: Even tho the feeling of depression followed through the whole movie and I was really depressed when it finished, I think this is a movie that really goes to your heart. Paul Giamatti was perfect for the role and you could really see his (Harvey Pekar's) inner pain.
The story is very well told with the real Harvey Pekar as a storyteller and I really like the way the mix cartoons with real life etc.
This is not a movie for kids, I'm 17 and I really liked it, but I don't think most of my friends would like it, they don't have the same cartoon interrest etc.
Anyway, if you like comics, see it...
Rating:
Summary: In the words of Harvey Pekar ordinary life is pretty complex
Review: I have a tendency to embrace films that celebrate post-modernism in a creative way, which is exactly what "American Splendor" does in telling the story of Harvey Pekar, the legendary writer of the underground comic of the same name. Once upon a time, in the 1970s in fact, Pekar met the equally legendary comic book artist R. Crumb and complained that comic books were never about ordinary schleps like him. The idea appealed to Crumb, and thus wa born "American Splendor," written by Pekar and illustrated by Crumb and others. In this 2003 film written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini we are treated to not only a cinematic depiction of Pekar (Paul Giamatti), but of the man himself and the comic book version as well (sometimes at the same time). This makes sense because the film is about both Pekar's life and his comic book, and the comic book was about his life, so moving back and forth between the two would be the way to go. What else would you expect from a film, which is art, about life imitating art (and visa versa). Pekar's life is a curious combination of pessimism and honesty. We are not surprised when he never gets promoted at work or when he gets testicular cancer because this seems to be the lot life has given Pekar. However, we are surprised when a fan who works at a comic book store, Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis), makes contact with him hoping he has an extra copy of an issue of "American Splendor" that she missed. She comes for a visit, curious to see which version of Pekar in the comic book is most like the real one. His immediate reaction is to tell her, "You might as well know right off the bat, I had a vasectomy." Her response later in their date, after a severe attack of food poisioning, is to announce, "I think we should skip the whole courtship thing and just get married." This is my kind of love story. If we are not sure that Harvey and Joyce are made for each other, their ability to coexist is confirmed when the real Harvey and Joyce comment on the proceedings in the film. Giamatti and Davis both achieve the level of performance where they are simply inhabiting the characters, which is the best way of making them real. That is important, because there is no more of a sense of plot to "American Splendor" the movie than there was to "American Splendor" the comic book. Pekar's life is a series of clashes, sometimes with David Letterman on late night television, sometimes with the other people at the hospital where he is a file clerk, and sometimes with himself. The great irony is that underground comic books were an alternative to the superhero comic books of D.C. and Marvel, yet in many ways "American Splendor" follows the standard superhero model. Eventually Howard the Duck made his way to Cleveland, but clearly the city dismissed as the armpit of the nation already had its own superhero in Pekar. The point that his life was less than ordinary is driven home repeatedly and ultimately the great appeal of this film is that it tells about an ordinary life in such a unique way.
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