American Splendor

[Andy]

Anyone see this? It's not a very new movie or anything, but I did a search on it and didn't find any mention of it. It came out on DVD recently and I decided to check it out because I like Paul Giamatti quite a bit, and it apparently got the top honors at the Sundance film festival and did well at Cannes, too.

The movie is a biopic of an underground comic writer named Harvey Pekar (it's very self-aware, both Paul Giamatti and the real Harvey Pekar appear several times, it never pretends it's not a movie or anything), who lives his life as a blue collar, every day guy, with a dead end job as a file clerk, a life that's going no-where, and a cynical, realist outlook. Eventually he finds a voice in his cynicism by transfering his real life observations and problems into an ironic and somewhat clever comic book, which in a time where all that was available in the medium were pure, idealist superhero stuff (the movie takes place from the 50's up till now), eventually carved a niche for itself.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't even find Harvey's actual work that was shown to be all that interesting or funny, or even very clever (though for the time, I'm sure it was a much different case), but the movie itself was still very compelling to me, it had a lot of funny and uplifting moments, and Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis (who played Harvey's third wife) were both very good imo. Overall I thought it was a really great movie, if you haven't seen it I strongly suggest anyone at least give it a rent.

[Frogacuda]

Saw it the day it came out in theaters, and again on the tail end of its theatrical run. Indeed a damned fine movie.

[Tragic]

My parents actually rented this last week but I didn't get a chance to watch it and they haven't told me what they thought. Maybe I'll go ask them...

[Andy]

You are man of exceptional taste, Frog