| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
It's a humane and witty treatment of an average life that, incidentally, speaks to the worth and inherent drama of average lives.
|
| 100 |
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
The movie is pricelessly comic -- the Harvey/Joyce scenes catalog the couple's neuroses with glee -- but it just as often reaches for something richer.
|
| 100 |
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Pirandello didn't have a patch on its complexities. Here's a popular entertainment with an eclectic soundtrack raising penetrating questions of identity in astonishing sequences that interweave live action with comic-book art.
|
| 100 |
USA Today
Mike Clark
Produced by HBO but too good not to play theaters, this soon-to-be minor classic is the best movie about society's untrendiest since "Ghost World" exactly two years ago.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
This film is delightful in the way it finds its own way to tell its own story. There was no model to draw on, but Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who wrote and directed it, have made a great film by trusting to Pekar's artistic credo.
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| 100 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Superbly conceived anti-biopic.
|
| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Filmed and acted to near perfection, it's one of the year's most innovative and exciting pictures.
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| 100 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
American Splendor presents Pekar as drawn on the page, Pekar as brilliantly interpreted by Paul Giamatti, and the actual Pekar, in the double role of narrator and interview subject -- sometimes all at once. The magic act is thrilling, and truly surprising.
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| 100 |
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
One of the funniest, smartest, most moving pictures of the year.
|
| 91 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
In the world of comic-book movies, American Splendor is the real deal, the warts-and-all adventures of the most unlikely hero on the comic stands.
|
| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Thoroughly unique work of art.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
The genius of the film is its utter commitment to the Pekar point of view.
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| 90 |
Variety
Scott Foundas
Sad, tender, wise and beautiful film... It's a profound tribute to lives lived on the fringes of society -- to the introspective loners who are the most observant chroniclers of our times.
|
| 90 |
Film Threat
Merle Bertrand
One of the most wildly original, dryly comical, and smartly structured films ever created.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
A narrative picture with many of the qualities of a documentary, not to mention a comic book -- is one of those rare, inventively made movies that isn't so taken with its own novelty it loses sight of its characters. Its warmth is for real, and it enwraps you.
|
| 90 |
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
That is the quiet triumph of American Splendor: behind the playfulness, it cleaves to an oddly old-fashioned belief that a life, even a life as mangy as Mr. Pekar’s, gains in depth and darkness when it is crosshatched with the imaginary. The nerd needs no revenge. [18 & 25 August 2003, p. 150]
|
| 90 |
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
It’s our great good fortune, and Pekar's, that this movie -- which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, followed by the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes -- is as true to the dyspeptic spirit of its source as anyone could have imagined.
|
| 90 |
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
A gentle, frank, and often hysterical love story about two people destined, and occasionally doomed, to be together forever. Some of us should be as lucky, as blessed, as Harvey Pekar.
|
| 90 |
Newsweek
David Ansen
A painfully funny movie. There’s nothing in the history of movie courtship quite like the first meeting between Pekar and his future wife and fellow depressive, Joyce Brabner.
|
| 90 |
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
It would be a mistake to regard American Splendor as an anthem for the common man. It is the UNCOMMON that is being celebrated here.
|
| 90 |
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Clever, engaging, and cannily faux populist.
|
| 90 |
Film Threat
Mark Sells
Though it has many moments of sarcasm and humor, the overall tone, like the comics themselves, is a depressing one.
|
| 90 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
It's an extraordinary film.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Remarkably fresh and exciting.
|
| 88 |
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
A feature film as odd, personal and sometimes mundane as his (Pekar) comics.
|
| 88 |
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Davis, a hugely underrated actress..., is deadpan perfection as Joyce, wearing oversized glasses and a wig that makes her look like an older version of Thora Birch's character in "Ghost World."
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
American Splendor reminds you that sometimes, simply getting out of bed each morning can be the most heroic of acts.
|
| 88 |
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Not your typical biopic. But it is one of the best times you'll have at the movies this year.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
As inventive as "Being John Malkovich," as psychologically quirky as "Ghost World" and as honest as the day is long.
|
| 88 |
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
American Splendor is deserving of accolades, not only because it tells an interesting story about a fascinating man, but because it does so with such freedom and freshness. I wish more of the comic book-inspired movies were like this.
|
| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
The film has the dog-eared look of a homemade valentine and the improvised sound of '60s jazz, courtesy of a score by Mark Suozzo and a spirited soundtrack including Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar," which might be the film's anthem.
|
| 88 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
The best American movie so far this year.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
Such a stylistic inconsistency might be bothersome in another film, but here it's just part of the texture.
|
| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
One genuine small triumph of American Splendor is that the title isn't ironic. The movie is a splendid, inventive piece of urban Americana about that hardboiled original, Harvey Pekar.
|
| 80 |
Slate
David Edelstein
The film isn't in the same key as Pekar's comic: The tempo is buoyant, puckish, and even more "meta" than the original.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
Biographies of living people are tricky if for no other reason than a biographer can sometimes feel protective of his or her subject. Berman and Pulcini obviously adore Pekar, but by not getting out of his head more often and taking him on his own harsh terms, they blow the chance to dig as deep as the source.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
With a lovably cantankerous sense of humor and an honest strain of hard realism and pathos, the film thrives on the tension that comes from an artist who devotes himself to the truth, but watches his image get away from him.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
There's as much at stake in the hilarious, moody and cantankerous film adaptation of "Splendor" as there was in this summer's other movies of comic-book antiheroes like "The Hulk" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
I can't say that this feature by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, about the life and art of Harvey Pekar, made me want to run out and buy his comic books, but it does offer a highly interesting and original introduction to them.
|
| 80 |
Empire
Caroline Westbrook
It's an hilarious, touching reminder that, sometimes, ordinary folk have the world's most interesting lives.
|
| 70 |
Time
A kind of bipolar movie, not exactly haha funny but true to life.
|
| 60 |
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
Pekar's autobiographical chronicle of day-to-day banality is a rich, if dingy, tapestry of ordinary life in all its infinite, homely peculiarity, which filmmakers Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini bring to uniquely eccentric life.
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