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American Splendor
Fine Line Features


8.0

based on 42 reviews
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based on 41 votes
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FILM:

The Nanny Diaries

MPAA RATING: R for language

Starring Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, Harvey Pekar, James Urbaniak, and Judah Friedlander

The true saga of a working-class Everyman who pursues self-expression without self-censorship -- and finds a grateful audience, critical admiration, and that most remarkable of happy endings, a loving family. (Fine Line Features)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Shari Springer Berman Robert Pulcini Harvey Pekar (comic book series American Splendor) Joyce Brabner (comic book series Our Cancer Year)
DIRECTED BY:	Shari Springer Berman Robert Pulcini
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 3, 2004 Video: February 3, 2004 Theatrical: August 15, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	100 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Named Best Picture of 2003 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Seattle Film Critics Awards, and the National Society of Film Critics. Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman received an Oscar nomination for their screenplay. Named one of the AFI's 10 best movies of 2003. Grand Jury Prize, 2003 Sundance Film Festival; FIPRESCI Award, 2003 Cannes Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

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.

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.

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.

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

One of the funniest, smartest, most moving pictures of the year.

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.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Thoroughly unique work of art.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The genius of the film is its utter commitment to the Pekar point of view.

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.

Film Threat Merle Bertrand

One of the most wildly original, dryly comical, and smartly structured films ever created.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Clever, engaging, and cannily faux populist.

Film Threat Mark Sells

Though it has many moments of sarcasm and humor, the overall tone, like the comics themselves, is a depressing one.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

It's an extraordinary film.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Remarkably fresh and exciting.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

A feature film as odd, personal and sometimes mundane as his (Pekar) comics.

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."

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

American Splendor reminds you that sometimes, simply getting out of bed each morning can be the most heroic of acts.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Not your typical biopic. But it is one of the best times you'll have at the movies this year.

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.

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.

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.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The best American movie so far this year.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Such a stylistic inconsistency might be bothersome in another film, but here it's just part of the texture.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

Empire Caroline Westbrook

It's an hilarious, touching reminder that, sometimes, ordinary folk have the world's most interesting lives.

Time

A kind of bipolar movie, not exactly haha funny but true to life.

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 41 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Christopher J. gave it a4:
I was excited about watching it, but then I didn't like it that much. It seemed to me like to much unjustified bitterness, if I remember correctly. I tried to watch it again, but I fell asleep.

Buttered P. gave it a10:
I've seen this move twice and I have to say, it's one of the best I've seen in some time. A great deal of humor lies just beneath the surface, and often times, it's just the absurdity and irony of the situation that is so unbelievably funny. Very inventive mingling of real people with their onscreen correlatives, and while this may be the one movie you'd think would not stoop to a happy ending.... well, see for yourself.

russell kruz gave it a10:
fantastic film.

R. Dalvi gave it a10:
Excellent. Liked the comedy as well as the dramedy. There was the nerd thing which I liked as well. Good movie.

J. Ryan G. gave it a7:
Technique gets in the way of substance on more than one occasion, but there is plenty of substance here. As a friend once told me, this film is about dreadfully ordinary people becoming something close to extraordinary, looking quite peculiar all the while. If only there were more SCENES - I mean whole, uncut, untouched, straightforward, unabashedly confident and beautiful SCENES.

[Anonymous] gave it a1:
Boring and more annyoing than most. one of the worst films since Prince Valiant.

Mike N. gave it a 10:
The only thing more amazing about this movie than the acting and plot was the way it was filmed. beautiful mix of reality and filming.

American Splendor Fine Line Features

American Splendor
Fine Line Features