KubrickCube

To tell a story without telling the audience what they should and shouldn't feel is courageous in any age; in this age of zealotry and cynicism, and especially in the film makers' own region, it is almost messianic...siddhartic even.

And of course, what better way to cut through the bu11shit and get to the facts than to lay them out from a child's perspective? The innocent child who still has a free will shows us how the world might be if conditions were better; the innocent children who have been indoctrinated, thereby mirroring the adult world, show us how the sorry world of today really is.

Children represent the truth, but not for long: the battle for their souls is the battle for the future.

A word of explanation to the many reviewers who say there's too much dialogue in this film and that it's boring or irrelevant: it's called subtext.

With subtext, what the characters mean is hidden just below the surface of the crap they talk, just like in real life. The writer doesn't tell you how to think or feel. The characters reveal themselves slowly. It's subtle. You have to listen carefully.

Watch the film again and pay attention this time. You might learn something.

Alternatively, rent a Bruckheimer and stop burdening the world with your opinions about this fantastically entertaining film, full of subtlety, humour, eroticism, thrills and spills.

It's amazing to read the negative critiques for 'Crumb'-- the venom poured onto it by reviewers with little explanation as to why they reacted so strongly. Just like the negative critics in the film itself, the critics here take everything Crumb produces at face value and lash out blindly with declamations of misanthropy, misogyny, racism and whatever other damning indictments they can lay their hands on. It seems the more emotionally honest and direct a film is (or a cartoon strip for that matter), the more people will hate it.

I suppose if you hold a mirror up to someone's ugly face, you shouldn't expect him to be grateful for being given the chance to see the way he really looks, even if this is the way we all really look.