American Splendor
2003 Directed by Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Synopsis
Ordinary life is pretty complicated
An original mix of fiction and reality illuminates the life of comic book hero everyman Harvey Pekar.
Cast
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This is one of the best biopics I've ever seen. It seamlessly blends documentary-style real life interviews, historical footage, animation, and actors' interpretations of the real-life personalities involved. It's really a phenomenal model, and I greatly enjoyed the attempt as a unique and wonderful piece of indie filmmaking. However, despite all of that originality and the exciting story-telling techniques employed… it's mind-numbingly boring. It isn't a long film, but it felt like it took me forever to trudge through it!
American Splendor is the true story of comic book author Harvey Pekar: native of Cleveland, Ohio and the very definition of the "every man." He has a dead-end job as a clerk in a VA hospital, but he has a…
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American Splendor is one of those films that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling afterwards but you're not sure why. 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.
Veering between comedy and drama, Harvey and Joyce's story is uneven but so is life and "American Splendor" captures that reality beautifully. A clever approach that works has the real Harvey, and to a lesser extent the real Joyce, alternate with Giamatti and Davis in telling their tales.
The "What's in a name?" monologue is pretty damn fantastic.
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American Splendor is a hard movie to place in a category. Is it a comic book movie? Well yes, it is based on The American Splendor comic but at the same time its a biography since the comic was written by Harvey Pekar about his own life.
Another thing that makes this movie a strange is the fact that Harvey Pekar is played by Paul Giamatti but Pekar himself is still in the movie in a white room between scenes as is all of the other real life people that the actors and actresses are portraying in this movie. Its very interesting to see Giamatti playing Pekar in one scene and then you see the man himself in the next…
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I love the lengths of creativity the writers and directors went to with this film. One of the great graphic novel adaptations, criminally underrated, and Giamatti's peformance here is the best he's given.
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A fascinating look into the life of an eccentric every man. Paul Giamatti nails Pekar's gruffness and leaves you feeling like rough edges aside, this is a man you'd want to be friends with. Stellar casting of Hope Davis as Pekar's long suffering with Joyce and Judah Friedlander as the "Original Nerd", Toby Radloff.
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This type of film seems to hit the right tone for me; neither being unrealistic with the tragic or the comedic. Giamatti is dead on, and the flipping between narrated animation and live film work great.
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American Splendor is one of those films that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling afterwards but you're not sure why. 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.
Veering between comedy and drama, Harvey and Joyce's story is uneven but so is life and "American Splendor" captures that reality beautifully. A clever approach that works has the real Harvey, and to a lesser extent the real Joyce, alternate with Giamatti and Davis in telling their tales.
The "What's in a name?" monologue is pretty damn fantastic.
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This movie is truly great. It tells a great story and is filled with great characters, all while being told in a wholly unique and unpredictable way. I wish more adaptations took this many risks.
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A cute and humorous character study whose narrative thread gets kinda weak by the end, but nice blurring of fact and fiction. Worth seeing. Script by team of Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman.
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I knew I loved this movie, but I'd forgotten just how wonderful it is.
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A lot of elements might have their dramaticness REALLY overplayed (I'm looking at you so-called 'Letterman feud'), but if it all was to make a better movie, I sure think we can overlook those instances.
Not quite a documentary, not quite a biopic, not really a comic-book adaptation. Instead, this is a comic book artist adaptation. And it is quite spectacular.
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Cualquier película que aparezca el crá del gordo Giamatti ya empieza con un +10.
No me gustó para nada el hecho que tenga mezcla con documental, si bien es interesante, me sacaba completamente de la atmósfera de la película, me pasó igual con el documental de danza "Pina" que cortaban los actos para entrevistar a los pelotudos de los actores, un flagelo al arte.
Nunca leí el comic, me quedó la sensación de que son una serie de buenos tuits ilustrados sobre la vida cotidiana del un clase media introspectivo en Estados Unidos de los 70's.
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An inventive, thought-provoking film unlike any I've ever seen. American Splendor is strange, because Paul Giamatti acts as Harvey Pekar, while Pekar narrates the film and is shown in his real life Letterman appearances. This was my favorite aspect of the film.
Apart from the awesome style, the movie told a great story and the acting is really tremendous.
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The film took me a bit off guard in beginning since I had never heard of the comic the film is based on nor had I read anything about the film. I was not a fan of having a mini semi documentary in the film with interviews, it was in a way like the directors couldn't decided if this was going to be a biography or a documentary and they kept some of the documentary stuff they filmed just in case for some reason.
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I've never read American Splendor. It's one of those comic books that's always gotten my attention while browsing the shelves, but one I've never chosen to bring home. Maybe I felt that that kind of realism in a comic would be too much for me. Comics were not something to remind of the idiosyncrasies of real day-to-day life, it was an escape. But I always picked it off the shelf to look at it... "someday soon."
I still haven't read American Splendor, but now I've seen the movie. I've never seen a biopic been done similar to this, for all I know it's as groundbreaking as Harvey Pekar's graphic novels were. In essence this is just a biopic, but it…