Rating: 
Summary: Theory about Charles
Review: The movie Crumb changed my life. I am also an artist. I was on antidepressants like Charles (he makes a referance to taking medication). I believe I would have ended up like Charles if I had not stopped taking antidepressants. They robbed me of my soul. I believe Charles' antidepressants led him to suicide. Stating that it was his mental illness is such a cop-out. Anybody want to share their antidepressant experience, please email me.
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular Documentary
Review: this really illustrates the life of an eccentric, it will show you what can go wrong in a life, how some can come out on top and others are crippled for life because of childhood/parents/or ...(?). It gives you a background on what Crumb was thinking when he drew/wrote his comics, what emotions he was trying to express. You get the feeling he hates his cartoons, that they are constantly mocking him as well as the world that ruined his and his brother's lives, scary enough, you can see how he is often right about the world all too often he isn't exaggerating excessively, which means you have to raise your kid carefully, I guess, Crumb is certainly haunted. It's not what you might expect and it is fascinating to me until the very moment it ends.
Rating:
Summary: Brutal Honesty
Review: In a documentary full of extremely eccentric characters, one must give credit to the director for allowing the viewer to connect with them. A voyage into the unique Crumb family consisting of brilliant minds perplexed by lifetimes of disfunction. Yet, one can leave this movie with some odd sort of understanding that makes the viewer perplexed about himself, as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Crumb is a great doodler with an interesting family
Review: It is interesting to see up close and personal the man who created Fritz, the Freak Brothers, Keep on Truckin' and that whole anti-social, counter-culture, underground, pschedelic black and white, big naked woman, misogynist, racist, anti-racist, anti-misogynist, head-shop comic book genre that was all the rage in the 70s. Obviously, Crumb is a true original who has inspired countless artists and cartoonists. His influence as a graphic artist is evident, from Ren and Stimpy and beavis and Butthead, to Courage the Cowardly Dog and Spongebob Squarepants, and just about every other cartoon on the cartoon channel these days. But his humor, "social commentary" and narrative skills are overblown. There is a scene where he goes thru one of his comic strips panel-by-panel - something about Mr Natural removing the head of a woman, and then bringing her to some other guy who has sex with her, and then her head comes back and she starts complaining about what has happened to her. Is this the one peice of his work that they felt best exemplified his cartoons? It takes up about 2 minutes of the movie. The cartoon is neither funny nor interesting social commentary. And then some British journalist and some woman's magazine editor do a point-counter point on this cartoon. Jeeze.
But the family history and the relationships between the brothers was fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: Substance over style.
Review: Perhaps because of the initial rejection of this documentary by the Academy, numerous critics jumped on the "Crumb" bandwagon, proclaiming the film the best of the nineties, the most significant cinematic event of recent years, the definitive portrait of the countercultural pop artist, etc. Get off it. Crumb is a good documentary because it manages to be relatively "invisible," making its fascinating subject the exclusive focus of its two engaging hours. It's a film to see, but not to own, at least not for cinematic reasons. R. Crumb himself comes off as a Howard Stern with talent minus any conspicuous desire for fame or even tendencies toward exhibitionism. The documentary, like its main character, is usually described as a candid picture of a dirty-minded artist who freely explores and exposes our own illicit, if repressed, fantasies and desires. But the film is more than a look at a pop artist who serves up controversial crudeness. Rather it allows us to feel an undertone of discomfort about his family which gradually builds to a realization of horror, as we finally see the degree to which Crumb's once normal-enough siblings and parents veered into corridors of total dysfunctionality. For some viewers, there will undoubtedly be comfort in knowing their own families are nothing like R. Crumb's. Many of us, on the other hand, will no doubt recognize in "Crumb" the failure of parents and children, of genes and dreams. The film speaks to the tragedy of lost potential--and in the end any fame or commercial success R. Crumb achieves seems to have been purchased at a high price.
Rating:
Summary: A Review Haiku by Todd Marrone
Review: A celebration
of the creative proccess
and strange families.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie
Review: I really liked this movie. It was very smart, well made, and one of the many movies I plan to buy. It was well made in the way that I could not tell if everyone Crumb talked to were saying everything they did from script or sharing what they knew about Crumb's and their own child hood. After seeing this, I could gather that Robert Crumb was not a very nice person, nor his family for that matter, but, being a fan of his work, it was nice to see how he started and how he works. I was pretty surprised to see his reaction to the Fritz The Cat movie. He was so mad, he ended up killing off the character.
Rating:
Summary: Perfectly Goddamn Delightful
Review: I have to believe that if you are off-put by Crumb's art (the headless women with monstrous thighs; the caricatures of blacks as wild jungle-dwellers), or find his frank admissions of "perverse" sexual attractions uncomfortable, or find yourself with a wardrobe full of San Francisco 49er memorabilia, then you will be put off by Crumb's character as well. I'm not. He's fascinating. Director Terry Zwigoff gets a lot of mileage out of Crumb's reactions to situations. Whether it's the confused and perplexed look he gets from watching the parade of shallow consumers he sees on the streets, or his half-sincere/half-uncomfortable bursts of laughter following bizarre tales from his youth, Crumb's expressive face says more than his mouth ever could. This, combined with his wonderfully laid-back voice (at once sarcastic and self-deprecating and tinged with regret) makes me wonder why it's taken so long for this man to get some camera time. Self-imposed exile, I suppose. He's definitely a star. The opening sequence over the credits is the lone contrived moment in an otherwise truthful film. It begins by showing a series of porcelain sculptures modeled on Crumb's most recognizable characters, followed by a shadowy shot of Robert, sitting in a near-fetal position, listening to one of his many old time blues records. It is the only moment in the film that feels fake, and threatens to ruin the film's credibility right from the starting gate. Thankfully, director Zwigoff has a perfect game the rest of the way. And there is only one moment that puts objectivity aside and allows for a bit of commentary on the part of the filmmakers. It concerns an interview with Deirdre English, a former editor of the magazine 'Mother Jones'. She gives her opinion (along with shown examples) of Crumb's supposed racism. Zwigoff precedes this with footage of Crumb complaining that the only people who found these comics offensive were white liberals, e.g. Ms. English herself. Otherwise, Zwigoff uses an even hand in his portrayals. Other than the legacy Crumb will leave with his innovative work, the film focuses heavily on his family life (or lives). What the heck was in the water at the Crumb house? Besides Robert and his well-known proclivities, his lesser known siblings have serious problems of their own. Older brother Charles, still living at home with his overbearing mother at the time the film was shot, admits to a severe reliance on tranquilizers, and baths biannually. Younger brother Maxon (whose role in the Crumb boys' childhood comics company was "supply boy"), lives alone in a dive hotel and spends his days cleansing his colon with a long strip of cloth while sitting on a bed of nails (two sisters declined to be interviewed). Upon seeing the devastating dysfunction of the apples that fell from the Crumb family tree, one begins to wonder not how odd Robert turned out, but rather how normal. It's the film's most startling revelation. Some of the most touching moments are those of Crumb with his own kids. Young daughter Sophie, the only woman Crumb's ever loved, receives her fathers gentle affection willingly. Son Jesse sports the costume of the hippies that Crumb so despised (long hair and dirty beard), but his artistic talent more than makes up for this transgression in his father's eyes. One moment has the two men competing in a contest to best reproduce a photo of an ugly insane woman. Contrast the unsettling subject matter of the photo, with Robert's sincere artistic advice to his son on how to draw out its interesting elements, and you get a wonderful scene of iconoclastic domesticity. "Crumb", the film, like Crumb, the artist, manages to combine humour and tragic sadness in a cohesive whole. It is at once repellent and mesmerizing, encompassing nearly every aspect of humanity. From the perverse to the pleasant, it all seems somewhat, well, Natural. A truly astonishing feat from a truly astonishing documentary film.
Rating:
Summary: Dementia! Excellent!
Review: This DVD is spectacular! Not all Documentaries need to be sunny and bouncy. this DVD is honest! Dark, honest and demented, you get a glimpse of the life R. Crumb has led and how his family has shaped his psyche. BRAVO!
Rating:
Summary: Revenge of the Nerd
Review: In their wonder years the three Crumb brothers were relegated to the position of pre-teen and teen cultural castoffs, nerdy misfits. Though they never got over this treatment, allowing it to inform all their days henceforth, drawing became their refuge. So they drew their fantasies and their impotent rage. The middle brother, Robert, still does; he's made a pretty good living turning his revenge of the nerd anger into art, the underground comic kind. His younger brother, Max, didn't cope quite as well, prone to undefined seisures and molestation of girls he couldn't have. He now uses meditation along with art to keep himself in check and out of institutions. The older brother, Charles, couldn't cope at all, living at home with his mother, controlling his rage and all other desires through medication for depression, ceasing to bathe, ceasing to care, and finally, as we learn at the end of the flick, ceasing to find a point to staying alive. The famous one is Robert, and without his longstanding psychic pain, we wouldn't know his art and he wouldn't be famous. Fame aside, he's not a good person, but he is an honest one, as his many drawings and strips attest, depicting as they do the ugly sorts of ideas that visit our dented minds. Thank goodness at least one of these three damaged packages was able to turn his existenial problem into an advantage. That doesn't happen that often. And his drawings: they're funny and ugly and beautiful all at once, just like my neighborhood.
|
