American Splendor

Paul Giamatti plays Harvey Pekar, a writer of underground comic books that document his mundane life as a neurotic file clerk. We meet the other nerds and eccentrics who populate his life, including his fat, bespectacled co-worker with a habit of over-enunciating his words; a black co-worker who buys record albums from Pekar but accuses him of selling nothing but junk; and a female fan of his comics who throws up on her first date with him then announces they should dispense with the courtship and just get married. (He accepts the proposal on the grounds that he's lucky to have any woman who will have him.) Pekar meets Robert Crumb, who illustrates the first of Pekar's comics. He becomes a favored guest on David Letterman until delivering a vituperative rant against Letterman and NBC that gets him barred from the show.

"American Splendor" is mostly a dramatization, but has scenes interspersed where we meet the real Harvey Pekar and the real people in his life. The movie contains many piquant moments, including a scene where the actors and their real-life counterparts appear together on a soundstage. In another scene, Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar exits the green room of the Letterman show, followed by a real clip of the real Pekar on the real show. But when Pekar delivers his rant, we see Giamatti with an actor playing David Letterman. We also see an animated Pekar conversing with the real Pekar—or, rather, with Giamatti playing the real Pekar. The movie's visual design makes it look like a mobile comic book; many scenes are bridged with shots of the camera sweeping over comic panels that bridge the story for us.

This had to have been tricky to pull off, but the movie feels effortless. The nature of identity and the nature of reality are themes the movie presents with a lot of humor and insight. Giamatti is excellent and supported by a uniformly fine cast, especially Hope Davis as Joyce Brabner, the woman who threw up on their first date. I also enjoyed the jazz songs on the soundtrack. What a funny, entertaining, intelligent movie.

In `American Splendor,' Paul Giamatti plays Harvey Pekar, the comic book creator who became famous as a recurring guest on the David Letterman Show. A resident of Cleveland, Pekar was a socially backward man who found he had the talent to translate the pain, loneliness and frustration of his own unhappy life into universal truths, writing material that other artists would then illustrate in comic book form. He began a series entitled `American Splendor,' which was really an ongoing autobiographical narrative, drawing on people and events in his own life as his source of inspiration. The film, a pseudo-documentary of sorts, tells his life story by cutting back and forth between both staged reenactments of the events in the stories and interviews with Pekar himself commenting on those events.

`American Splendor' is an offbeat little gem that, in many ways, approximates the look and style of a comic book. As the story plays itself out, captions often appear on the screen, as well as illustrations from Pekar's actual work based on the scene we are witnessing. Robert Pulcini and Sheri Springer Berman, who wrote and directed the film together, create a surrealistic tone by having Pekar and his real friends and companions frequently appear on screen next to the actors who are portraying them (some of them dead ringers for the originals). This technique brings a homespun, homey sweetness to the film. `American Splendor' is a paean to all the social misfits in the world, people who, for whatever reason, can't seem to fit into society's prescribed mold but who often develop strong, meaningful bonds with similar individuals. The movie is also a tribute to the power of art, both for the artist who finds purpose and release through his work and for those to whom his work speaks on a personal and emotional level. The people who inhabit Pekar's strange world – both in reality and within the borders of his comic strip boxes – are seen in the film as warm, good-natured individuals, not socially astute, perhaps, but not losers either.

The emotional focal point for the film is Harvey's relationship with his wife, Joyce, beautifully played by Hope Davis. Despite the somewhat bizarre nature of their marriage, Harvey and Joyce forge a lasting commitment based on reciprocity and devotion. In fact, in the latter sections, the film achieves an emotional depth one doesn't expect it to early on, partly because Harvey is dealt a cruel blow of fate that he and his wife are forced to navigate through together. Yet, the film as a whole is filled with a sly, deadpan, mischievous sense of humor that demonstrates a keen grasp of the absurdities of life.

As Pekar, Paul Giametti turns in a flawless performance, capturing the nebbishness, cantankerousness and ultimate likeability of the man he is portraying.

In both style and content, `American Splendor' is aptly named.

By no means your average true story, American Splendor blends fact with fiction to create a slightly surreal world. Surreal, because it's so down-to-earth. It's a tale about the life of Harvey Pekar, essentially a relative non-entity. His one saving grace is that he writes comic books, the twist being that they're not about superheroes or anything extraordinary. Rather, they're about gritty reality. Pekar is the star of his own stories, and the life he leads, the people he knows and the everyday things he does are the essence of what his stories entail.

It's a strange story, and to rate it as a movie seems odd, somehow. The guy has led a pretty staple life, and there's nothing in it which elevates him above anyone else. Then again, that's really the point. There are plenty of elements in here which we can all relate to, and consequently, we find ourselves drawn into it. Ultimately it's convincing.

The acting is generally pretty impressive, particularly from Paul Giamatti as Harvey. Given the real Harvey features in the movie (Hence the blending of fact and fiction) we are able to compare them, and it must be said Giamatti gets it spot on. He does a great job of portraying a grump with a heart. By no means is Pekar ever shown as a mercenary worker, but it's pretty obvious he's one of the good guys; hence another strength here. Because he's shown as wysiwyg, you feel like you either know him, or are him. He's the epitome of your average man, and not even just American.

It's a quirky subject for a movie, but it certainly works and entertains. It's so ordinary yet surreal that it demands your attention, and it's a worthwhile journey to go on.

For many people, this movie is a mirror.

This has to be #1 on my list of movies whose popularity I don't understand. It's occasionally humorous, but the story isn't very interesting or insightful. It's the biopic of a comic book writer (not artist) who, despite his success, worked as a file clerk most of his life. I like the idea of a biopic about an ordinary guy, but I didn't find Harvey Pekar's life especially interesting. My life deserves a movie more than this guy's. The worst part of it is that I found Pekar's own work trite and uninsightful. Have you ever heard the one about the old Jewish lady arguing with the cashier at the super market? Of course you have. You've heard it from any number of stand-ups in your life. But you've never heard it as unfunny as when Harvey Pekar tells the story. I liked the acting, especially Hope Davis, who plays Pekar's third wife. I love Pekar's co-worker who is obsessed with Revenge of the Nerds. And I did think that climactic speech about Pekar's phone book namesakes. That's the only time where I felt the film found any depth in its material. Otherwise, I thought American Splendor was kind of lame. 5/10.

It's always hardest to write about what you love and I not only love, but also, to steal a joke from Woody Allen in ANNIE HALL, loaf, luff and lerve this magnificent film. Therefore this will be difficult. Here goes anyway...

No-one can possibly deny that this is innovative in its use of the real Harvey Pekar (and people from his life) frequently intruding into the fictionalised account. But this is more than just a neat trick. It works brilliantly. Instead of distancing the viewer from the narrative makes one feel more involved in the film's world. How dare this work? This kind of arty-farty stuff is usually guaranteed to annoy me - but this is nothing short of revelatory in its Russian doll-like idea of having fiction within fiction within fact...and you don't need to be some kind of high-brow film critic to appreciate it!

All the performances are gob-smackingly good, and there isn't one moment in the film that bores, irritates, patronises or rings a false note. The cast inhabit their roles like they were born to play them. and the determination not to idealise them or their situations, makes my cynical anti-Hollywood production values heart sing for joy.

Do not, I beg you, be put off by the epithet "cult" with which this film has been tarred as if it would appeal only to comic-book fans. No, the appeal here is universal - dealing with Pekar's existential worries and his search for the meaning in his life. It's criminal that American SPLENDOR with all its wit, heart and slickness isn't more highly regarded or more widely known.

Masterpiece.