American Splendor

Rating:
Summary: What a great movie.
Review: Wow. What a great adaptation of comicbook author Harvey Pekar's unusual autobiographical ouvre. I used to read "American Splendor" back when it first came out, though I basically lost track of the series in the mid-1980s, as other literature rose to the fore on my cultural radar. Watching this film was exactly like reading the books (and brilliantly replicates a lot of Pekar's original schticks... ) I feel like I'm caught up at last... and now I'm ready for the next issue to come out! (PS - amazing how actor Paul Giamatti looks more like the comicbook version of Pekar than the real Pekar himself does... Now, that's great casting! )

Rating:
Summary: Succumbs to some Hollywood phonyness, but still worth seeing
Review: American Splendor is enjoyable and intelligently made. But it's ultimately not so far from the usual Hollywood balm: the film should not be confused with the gritty, anti-romantic ephinanies of Harvey Pekar's best work. The filmmakers deserve credit for inviting thought about the artifice of the film (with, for examples, scenes of the actors interacting with the "real" people they portray), but those scenes reveal the extent to which the film glamorizes Pekar and his circle to make them more "audience friendly" (in other words, more like the reassurring fantasies movie audiences are accustomed to). Giamatti is excellent as Pekar. Hope Davis is a fine actress, but miscast here--no matter how shlumpy or depressive she tries to be, she can't stop being perky and appealing in a cute movie-star way... in a profound sense, she'll always be remote from the world of Pekar and Joyce Brabner. The gap between the sort of lives that are usually represented in the media and the mundane experience of a file clerk in Cleveland is key to Pekar's work, and the film treats that gap as no big deal--you see, even the fileclerk gets to be a movie star, and his movie gets to have a tearjerking happy ending, too.

Rating:
Summary: thesis = ordinary life, isn't so ordinary
Review: this is one of my top ten movies that were theatrical releases in 2003. this is a great story about a man and his life. the whole point of this movie is that everyday life isn't so ordinary. things happen, people change, people grow; and this movie covers those topics with a poignant look into the life of harvey pekar, full-time file-clerk, part-time comic-writer.

paul giamatti plays the role of pekar with a high level of poise. he seems to take all of the quirks of the author without trying too hard. his characterization is one of the best of the year. he takes a normal, "boring" man and turns him into an obsessive-compulsive comic-writer with a flare for the ordinary.

this movie will make you think, this movie will make you laugh, this movie may even make you cry. i hope that is does all of the above for you, because it certainly deserves the accolades.

a disclaimer at the end...this movie isn't for everyone. i put it into a category with a couple of other movies (ex. lost in translation, the station agent) in that it isn't the most thrilling or gripping story. but it deserves high marks in the story telling, the presentation, and the acting. i highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys art in film!

Rating:
Summary: Funny, disturbing, and highly creative.
Review: 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.)

Rating:
Summary: The Tenuous Life of an American Anti-Hero
Review: I loved this movie. The actors just couldn't have been any more brilliant. Another critic wrote that Mr. Pekar's personality was not worth making a film about. That person also wrote that they had no empathy for Harvey regarding his illness. You attack a person because you don't like the way their cancer is portrayed on film? You've got to be kidding. Those scenes were heart-wrenching. I lost my best friend of 27 years and another friend of 5 years recently to cancer, and was married to a man who had prostrate cancer at 18 and lived a semi-crippled life physically and socially because of it, so get off that soapbox. This film is not for the shallow viewer, obviously. But that makes sense, because it is not mainstream, and that is the whole point.
I had heard of Harvey on and off over the years. I was never into the underground comics - found them too vile for my taste, yet, they are a part of our total national culture and are an excellent illustration of yet another part of society that the mainstream wishes didn't exist. That is the reason the film needed to be made. Hats off to the producers. One has to use one's mind while watching this film, which may be a strain for some creatures who are happy to be fed the cinematic schlock the rest of the cattle are eating. Not me, thanks. I won't have what they are having.
It was clear to me from the first scene where little Harvey doesn't have a Halloween costume, that something might have not been right in his home growing up. Perhaps little Harvey was not popular at school, therefore was left out of the conversations kids have about what they will wear, or perhaps he just didn't understand the concept of Halloween (it is possible)and was unable to find 'fun' in dressing up in costume. He even says "Hey lady, I'm just a kid from the neighborhood" after she gives him the third degree about what where his costume isn't. He just wanted candy like everyone else, but wasn't 'part of' the "Halloween" mindset. Like baboons, humans are social creatures and whoa to the little baboon who doesn't fit in. This is Harvey's personal pathos. Any chimp should be able to see that.
This is my take on Harvey: he is no dope. He is an avid reader and devotee of complex jazz. He does not hold back his thoughts, which many people find irritating, but all he does is parrot reality back to the rest of us. Apparently not everyone likes truth.
Harvey's insistance on being honest, as seen in the Letterman show debacle,(which I remember watching on TV), kept him on the outside fringes of mainstream society. His gift is the ability to simplify complex life problems and convey them in his cartoon text.
This is not a case of "Being There" (the film). This is Harvey the reductionist, boiling down his observations of everyday life into simple digestible statements. That is his strength. He is not a visual artist. He needed the assistance of artists to illustrate the pathos he observed, and the combination worked.
I was in tears at the end of the film, as he hugs his wife after the surprise retirement cake party, because it was very clear to me that he has felt disconnected from other people for most of his life. He is honest with his film audience when he states that he made the flick for some extra 'change' to help him thru his retirement. He lets us know that there is no "happy ending". It doesn't get more honest than that. Does Hollywood come out and tell you to see a movie so they can afford to fly their private jets to their private vacation islands in the south Pacific? I think not. Hollywood folks always talk about their 'art' - that it is all that matters. Give me a break. Art is art, rich or poor. One needs to remember that Harvey had just been knocked out by cancer and retired from what was certainly not a high-paying job, and had a teenage daughter and wife to support, remember?
No, this is not the story of a whining, boring person. This is a story of a real antihero, and is a story the rest of us should pay attention to. Harvey's commentary in his comics, and the film, rip apart the mass-consumption-throw-away mentality of america by offering a realistic glimpse of the actual tenuousness of our fabricated, made-for-tv lives.
Rock on Harvey, wherever you are.

Rating:
Summary: It made me surprisingly empathetic
Review: At the beginning of the movie, Harvey Pekar, the file clerk/comic book author "protagonist," confesses to the camera that his second wife is leaving him. He was bitter that she waited until he paid the last of her graduate school tuition and obtained her Ph.D., only to dump him immediately. He returns to their shabby apartment to find she is moving out, assisted by presumably her new scholarly boyfriend and she tells Pekar with disgust, arrogance and rancor, that he is plebian and that "it's over." At that initial point in the film I had much sympathy for Pekar, having experienced something similar myself. I won't bore you with the details, but in any event, I initially believed I shared a common experience with Pekar. However, I was wrong. Only one of our ex-wives had no ethical justification for her actions and that individual has never worn the appellation "Mrs. Harvey Pekar."

Pekar bumbles his way through life as a file clerk in a dreary hospital basement. After talking with one of his friends, a promising underground cartoonist named Robert Crumb, Pekar decides to write a comic book facetiously entitled American Splendor, based upon his own drab life and his observations of all of the odd human beings that inhabit his world. Pekar authors the issues and various artists, including Crumb, do the drawing for what turned into a cult comic book series.

This all has some potential, surely, for a story cast in a unique style and from a unique viewpoint, perhaps something akin to Being John Malkovitch. The DVD box cheerfully refers to Pekar as a curmudgeon, but the more I saw of this movie, the more euphemistic that term became. Our friend Pekar, you see, is not a crusty-but-lovable eccentric. Rather, as the "story" progresses (actually, since none exists, it can't very well progress), it becomes abundantly clear that Pekar is an incredibly dull, dull-witted man-child with a maturity that has not advanced past middle school level. He is astonishingly rash, selfish and immature and is a person lacking in tact, empathy, common sense, ambition, dignity, humor or grace. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Pekar's voice - both in real life and as portrayed - is a hoarse, nasally shrill that would be fully a non-issue if it only uttered anything reasonable or meaningful, but with Pekar's obnoxious or foolish remarks, it becomes unbearably annoying.

Pekar has one skill, namely as a con-artist and fraud of the most shameful sort. He does not steal from the elderly or anything of that nature, but instead, has managed to hoodwink first some comic book fans and subsequently, the producers of this movie and numerous movie critics, (including Roger Ebert) into thinking that his life contains anything of interest. There is a free weekly independent newspaper in my town and it has several of these bizarre, non-humorous cult cartoon serials on its last several pages - perhaps you have seen something similar. I have always regarded those cartoons as being utterly non-funny, non-poignant and puzzlingly devoid of any real purpose. Pekar's comic book and movie are identical to those cartoons and will appeal to the same audience of individuals who desire to be exactly the same sort of non-conformists as all of their other little avant garde, pseudo-literary friends.

Even Pekar's fight with testicular cancer is uninteresting and builds no sympathy from anyone, given how pathetic he is during the course of treatment; he altogether lacks any degree of dignity in his [successful] battle with that horrible disease. I make this criticism notwithstanding the fact that I lost one of my best friends, at age 27, to cancer and I have a great deal of empathy to anyone struggling against cancer. Pekar is the anti-Lance Armstrong.

The movie is splattered with voice-overs and actual documentary-style segments featuring the real Harvey Pekar. In one of those, he admits that the only reason he has sanctioned and participated in this film is to provide him with money for his retirement. That is the only purpose I could discern for this pointless movie. Harvey Pekar must go into the annals of history, both cinematic and real, as the most pathetic and uninteresting character or person ever to exist. Pekar has only himself to blame for all of the woes that he suffers in his pitiful life, except for the cancer. My comment in the title of this review does not refer to empathy for Pekar, but refers to the growing empathy I developed for Pekar's ex-wife. One would be hard-pressed to find a person whose background makes him more prone to be sympathetic to Pekar and opposed to the ex-wife than I am, yet in a very short period of time, I began to loathe Pekar and sympathize with what she must have experienced being his spouse. University tuition is meager and altogether inadequate consideration for his ex to have tolerated him as long as she did.

The only portion of the plot of this movie that prompted anything close to a positive reaction was when the Pekars adopt the daughter of one of the comic book artists, much to Joyce Pekar's delight. However, that is a very small portion of this movie and does not lend justification to an otherwise dreary and meaningless collection of occurrences (calling it a "tale" would be too much of a stretch.)

I won't pan all aspects of this movie, as the actors did a fine job. They simply were denied a vehicle in which their acting skills could lead to an end product with any merit or worth. Even if the most superb chef at a five-star restaurant applies all of his or her skills to a meal, the final result will be unpalatable if the main ingredient given to the chef is swine manure.

In summary, this is one of the three least interesting movies I have ever seen. Please do not waste two valuable hours of your life to go see this dull drivel.

Rating:
Summary: Unique
Review: Every once in a long while a movie comes along that just won't fit into a category. Is it documentary? Is it fiction? Is it going anywhere I've been before? Do I have a clue as to what is going to happen next? In the case of this movie, the answer is no. How refreshing! And I'm not just saying that because it isn't about anything in particular. I never did figure out what "The Hours" was about and I can't say I really liked it, either. So I don't enjoy movies just because they are odd. I found I really cared about these people and that's half the battle won for the director in the first place.

Rating:
Summary: Funniest Movie of the Year
Review: Movies are often supposed to wow the viewer by taking us to new worlds, new environments that we have rarely been exposed to. Making one those films, about alien worlds or distant earthly drama is easy enough. What is hard, and what makes American Splendor such a great movie, is its ability to make everyday life extraordinarily funny. And this is not just ordinary life, this is the life of a real loser. Yet, I cannot think of a more sympathetic character than Mr. Harvey Pekar, a nothing functionary at a VA hospital in the pit of the world, Cleveland Ohio. His life is a mess, but it's a hilarious debacle, and he never lets it take him too far down. And along the way, he proves that he is a seriously funny guy.

Pekar's life pretty much is a lonely mess once his wife leaves him. He lives in an apartment bedecked with books and other garbage. However, he does achieve at least a modicum of celebrity when he becomes involved with Robert Crumb, the celebrated counterculture comic. Although he cannot draw, Pekar has a wonderfully cynical view of the world that endears him and his stories to Crumb. From then on, Pekar is a raging machine of observational humor, hitting on everyone and everything that bothers him. His "celebrity", as it were, attracts a fan, a complex but understanding woman who later becomes his wife. Pekar's life changes throughout, as he experiences the best and worst limited fame can offer. From his momentous stint on the Letterman show to his battle with cancer, Pekar never wavers in his refreshing outlook on the world, even in its darkest moments and incarnations. The audience nods its collective head and laughs throughout.

Pekar's story is told by the wonderful comic actor Paul Giamatti, who plays the role of a slovenly fop to a T. His dour but loyal wife is played by the quaint Hope Davis, a pretty but extremely layered woman. The movie is interplayed with cartoon drawings and comments by the real Pekar. The cartoons are hilarious and bring a lot to the movie's quirkiness, a charm to be sure. I felt Pekar's genuine appearances should have been cut a bit, but in moderation they are quite humorous. It is an accidental feel good movie, and it is, at times, absolutely hilarious.

Rating:
Summary: A Reviewer's Delight...
Review: I'm talking about professional reviewers here folks, the men and women who are obliged to watch everything that comes to theaters across this land. It is easy to become bored by the mediocrity that is present in much of what comes to both the big and small screens. I can imagine the excitement for a reviewer who encountered this strange film that seems intent on violating every rule of screenwriting 101. This isn't about attractive, happy people overcoming pseudo crises. This is about the unhappy schlump we seldom encounter because he's too depressed to venture out into the sunlight. He is, fundamentally, a boring man who remarkably chooses to share his life, warts and all with the consumers of comic books. And as we all know, this movie was near the top of most reviewers' lists of best films for 2003.

I enjoyed the film, especially the use of creative graphics that convey the art form represented by comics. I also appreciated the willingness of everyone associated with this venture to hang out with the homely characters surrounding and including Harvey Pekar. I imagine those folks most inclined to object to this film are those who go to movies to take themselves out of the humdrum of their existence. In this quirky film they found themselves confronting folks very much like those we encounter in our everyday existence, stumbling along, warts and all, trying to make their lives work and often failing miserably.

Harvey would not likely be a person I'd care hanging out with, but I surely appreciate the drive that led him to turn his very mundane life into art. And to my delight, the film makers captured that effort with style and originality.

Rating:
Summary: GOLD!... would not describe this movie at all...
Review: Take a binder. Put some doodles on it and it is interesting. Now take that same binder and erase all your doodles. It looks bland and boring. American Splendor is that erased binder. It is boring but people put that into genius.

The film goes nowhere. It is a biography, but it doesn't have a plot at all so it fails to really grab my attention. It is not funny. Nothing about it is funny. It is depressing, but at the same time flat. The characters aren't that interesting as they are all the same. Boring. How is that genius? I don't feel entertained or enlightened while watching this film. People will praise the worst things just because they are different. This biography isn't being nominated for best film of the year as some thought. The reason? It isn't that good.

You dont have to be a "critic" to tell someone when something is good or bad. This movie is bad. It starts lifeless and it ends the same way. Lifeless. Do you want to watch someone who makes every situation miserable?

Well, the movie is doing bad on sales for a reason at least! Same goes for not winning any awards.