Rating: 
Summary: Amazing, but disturbing at times
Review: A fabulous, first-rate documentary that details the life and neuroses of the famed cartoonist. The film neither criticizes or lauds Crumb, but presents him as a garden variety flawed human whose amazing, artistic talents are tempered by an unpleasant if not viciously misogynistic view of women. The film, however, also explores Crumb's relationship with his brothers and mother, making him look amazingly "normal" in comparision. One leaves the movie both fascinated and sad for Crumb's brothers, whose serious mental illnesses lead them to committ suicide. A must see--not for the young at heart!
Rating:
Summary: Great documentary
Review: Fascinating film about the comic artist and his work, whose ideas revolutionized underground comics in the 60's, and whose influence is still being felt today. Even so notable an art historian as Robert Hughes says Crumb is the Bosch or Brueghel of our age. Based on this film, I would say Robert is actually the most normal of the three sons! He is also surprisingly articulate about his work in addition to his great artistic abilities. Despite the off-beat subject matter, I found this to be one of the finest documentaries I've ever seen. There is not one dull moment in the entire film, and some of the scenes are truly memorable. Definitely worth your attention if you haven't seen it yet.
Rating: 
Summary: 5 Star Film, but DVD release is skimpy on extras
Review: The film itself is fascinating! I love this movie, but the DVD release could have easily included many extras to make the DVD release extra special. Without the extras on DVD, I am disappointed by the missed opportunity to have more insights added, beyond what we got on the VHS version, already.I have worn out my VHS copy, so this was the first DVD movie that I ever bought. The DVD version has a much sharper picture. There are many times throughout the DVD version where I notice drawings and things in the background, because they seem to be in much better, sharper detail than the VHS version that I've watched for years. Also very helpful is the somewhat cleaner sounding audio, and the ability to add sub-titles on the DVD release. Between the sharper picture quality, the cleaner audio, and the subtitles, I have noticed over a dozen interesting character developments that I never noticed from the VHS. This is especially true when folks are talking at once, or mumbling too much. On the VHS version it seems like nothing noticeable, but on DVD I suddenly get some more insight into the people in this movie. The subtitles sometimes show statements being said, and the clearer audio proves that they are saying these things, but I never noticed them on the VHS version. Other than that, I am disappointed that there are no creative extras on this DVD release. It is so easy to get the director to come in to record commentary, that adds so much insight into the subject matter, and the creative process involved during filming. I feel like they really cut corners, or made very little effort to make the DVD release something special. They could have added extra art work, or extra commentary, or extra SOMETHING, but did not. The DVD version is superior to the VHS version, but mainly because of the superior DVD format, not creatively superior at all. Too bad.
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to know or care who R. Crumb is to love it.
Review: Brilliant documentary about the weird cartoonist and his even weirder family. The madness that populates his family (mother and two brothers) is really disturbing, and you won't ever forget those scenes where the crazies are the stars. A fine film, should become a classic.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best films ever made.
Review: Although technically a documentary, "CRUMB" works on so many levels that I just have to simply call it a great Film - it's hilarious, it's moving, it's entertaining, hypnotic, mesmerizing, and brilliant. Don't miss it! My biggest disappointment is that the DVD version is not a great transfer - looks actually slightly worse than my VHS copy.
Rating:
Summary: .
Review: Crumb is an awe-inspiring film when weighed against some of the more acclaimed "thought-provoking" films I've seen recently: it probes into SO much that is significant (the nature of art, the nature of madness, the nature of sexuality and sexual perversion, the nature of American society, the implications of American history of the last 50 years or so -- the list goes on); but, in part because it's a documentary, all of this rich material is just *there*--it isn't being shoved in your face and manipulated for effect in the fashion of more popular "thought-provoking" films. The film is honest and unflinching; it doesn't glorify Crumb, nor does it denigrate him--(we hear from great appreciators of his work as well as severe critics, and neither side is emphasized or made to seem more valid than the other)--it simply explores him, and his very bizarre family, for what he/they are, while subtley setting everything that we learn against the backdrop of American society as a whole during the last century. In terms of being a documentary for those curious about Crumb and his work, it doesn't shortchange you in any way that I can see. We get to spend plenty of time with Crumb himself, of course; we also get to spend a good amount of time hearing from his wife, and ex-wife, his mother and two brothers, his friends and an associate or two, and, as I mentioned, several critics, each with their own take on Crumb's work. We also get to *see* a lot of Crumb's work by way of numerous well-edited, well-placed montages, as well as artwork by his brothers, who are themselves exceptionally talented. We learn a great deal about Crumb's youth, attitude, hang-ups, perversions, artistic status, and anxieties. This alone would be great, but what pushes the film even further up the ladder is the clever but straightforward, unembellished way the movie forces us to take the information we receive--all the aforementioned perversions, anxieties, etc.--and *relate* it back to the society from whence it came. This theme, this connection, is not belabored, but it is tangibly there, and it is very true that while Crumb and his family are the subjects of the film, they are also serving as complex vehicles for much broader, more universal themes and questions. But all of this is done without a trace of pretention. As if this wasn't enough, the soundtrack is absolutely A++, culled from Crumb's own collection of old records. It is well-chosen and well-used, enhancing the atmosphere and drily emotive moments of the film, but w/o being the slightest bit intrusive. I liked this film the first time I saw it a couple years back, but seeing it again recently just really floored me. Truly a fantastic and greatly underappreciated movie. The Academy's failure to offer it any recognition says a great deal about their thematic agenda. But who cares about the Academy anyhow? I highly recommend Crumb. Even if you know nothing about him, and your interest suffers for that--I guarantee you'll still find this worth your while. Powerful without trying, touching without being sentimental or manipulative, disturbing without celebrating the fact, and profound without being pretentious. Genuinely superb.
Rating: 
Summary: Appalling picture quality
Review: So it is perhaps the greatest film of it's kind ever made... but it's difficult to enjoy since the picture quality is so poor. The contrast seems very wrong and the colors are garish. It seems when I last saw this film on VHS it looked much better!
Rating:
Summary: The Crumb Brothers: on the vectors of Epithet Ontology
Review: The counterpoint to this startling film is Robert Crumb's older brother Charles, the filial Light That Failed. The man seems to have passed through levels of persecution, abuse, and chemical imbalance I've never even *thought* about entering into relations with. Clearly we are dealing with a level of pathology that has little to do with scholarship and artistry, a tragedy without recall and redemption, to be perhaps distinguished from Robert's largely self-provoked, self-consciously experimental testing-of-boundaries. Of course, every artist begins as an outsider, but once s/he achieves a certain level of genius and virtuosity, the tables are turned, the polarities reverse, and the solitary artist becomes the ultimate Insider, leaving everyone *else* on the Outside, squirming and retching in their careerist institutional puppetry. Or as Robert Crumb might say, Epithet Existenz. Charles Crumb (and to a lesser extent the youngest Crumb brother, Max) has been damned to walk that ashen middle ground as a beat-down terminal cripple whose fetishization of the 19th-century English novel has sealed his festering sarcophagi. He is not a quite a "failure," he's simply been mowed over and buried alive by the epithet-ontology of the American mass socius. This is a fate every young artist acknowledges as a possibility but is compelled to laugh in the face of. It is a level of stasis and death-in-life which has little to do with the artistic calling, with a necessary *ascesis*. Although I admit that Charles Crumb exemplifies the illness or heat-death that's always a hairsbreadth away from any type of risky anti-epithet ontology, he simply wasn't able to develop the means his younger brother Robert did to build a proper war-machine, as a stay against the darkness. He could be imaged as the Christ of postmodern artistry, the f.-up who died for our pretensions, the victim who presents a chilling epidemiology of botched artistic ambition. CHARLES CRUMB IS A VECTOR OF DISEASE. He is the zombie at the center of creative endeavor that must be repressed at all costs.... Needless to say, this film comes with my highest recommendations.
Rating:
Summary: Crumb is at the top, way at the top.
Review: I hate to say 'this is the best film ever' because that phrase is thrown around so much and is lackluster in thought. However, Crumb to me is the most meaningful and probably the best film I have seen. It widened my mindset and views on society like no other influence before. "They're all walking advertisements" One of my favorite lines as R. Crumb disgustingly stares at passerbys on a San Fran sidewalk. The film is packed full of insightful quotes, especially from Charles Crumb. Geez, I could go endlessly on about this film, I did after all write about it for my college application essay. Maybe someone out there will rent it and have that same, rare magical connection with it like I did.
Rating:
Summary: This Things I Believe
Review: This is a very well-made film, but don't think that just because Crumb and company are in it, that everything within is gospel truth. Documentaries are just as much contrived works as any other film. Use this film as a springboard into further research into the life of Crumb. His existence isn't as cut-and-dry as Zwigoff and Lynch make it out to be.
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