... affects the gloom but sneaks up on you with the crooked smile of the pulp poet of working class life.

| Sep 24, 2023

The real Pekar (as well as an animated version of him), Brabner, and Radloff are incorporated into this cleverly constructed and visually inventive masterpiece that embraces and celebrates the outsider.

| May 26, 2022

Played to perfection by Paul Giamatti, Pekar defies the categories of hero, villain, or even anti-hero. He simply exists, an ordinary man trying to make the best of a largely disappointing life.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 27, 2018

What makes the film special throughout is the way its form mirrors its subject matter. On every level, it's a film about unlikely marriages.

| Apr 10, 2018

Like Ghost World before it, Pulcini and Berman have taken an unconventional comic and given it a cinematic make-over.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 4, 2014

Mild fame may have patronized these folks, but the movie pays them a comic homage that feels flattering, fast-witted, and true.

| Apr 12, 2013

I can't imagine how the filmmakers went about it, let alone pulled the whole thing off, but their film comes together in unpredictable and remarkably pleasurable ways.

| Apr 12, 2013

Underneath all this schtick pulses a restrained, pensive take on how the terrific loneliness of the modern human condition can be ameliorated through its narration. Misery loves company, in other words, especially if it's comically described.

| Jun 18, 2012

Channels Pekar's vision of art and life as twinned struggles. One of cinema's great first-date sequences is here. We're splendidly shown how a lower-class nine-to-fiver has his own creative selves and richly expressive life.

| May 10, 2012

Earthy, gritty and real; for older kids.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 21, 2010

Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's biopic about Harvey Pekar - who injected schadenfreude into the superhero-comics world - wonderfully etches one man's exploration of using misery as a creative outlet and, eventually, a critical coping mechanism.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 25, 2010

The rare artist biopic that goes beyond the dull march of events and actually illuminates the creative process.

Full Review | Jul 14, 2010

The film gives a charming, funny, and many times engrossing account of Pekar which will surely please fans and garner some new ones and I liked it a lot.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 29, 2009

American Splendor is certainly one of the most complete, satisfying and entertaining hybrid of documentary and dramatisation, as well as of live action and 2D animation/comic stills.

| Oct 18, 2008

Un film assez lent, mais au récit tout de même fort bien construit

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 20, 2008

A glorious rebuke to all this summer's recycled, effects-ridden, laboriously "fun" Hollywood disappointments piled along the wayside like so many crashed cars.

| Aug 18, 2008

A life affirming experience, perhaps even a life changing one.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 7, 2007

The movie is as unclassifiable as the comic -- neither documentary nor biopic, or maybe both.

| Original Score: A+ | Jul 23, 2007

Mr. Giamatti and Ms. Davis seem to feed off each other, bringing out the best performances we've seen from these actors.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 14, 2007

We're constantly kept on our toes regarding issues of representation while Pekar's sour but indefatigible working-class skepticism carries us along.

| Apr 17, 2007