\American Splendor"" comes with its own disclaimer, provided in a voiceover by its dismal and thoroughly-if not depressingly-real protagonist, Harvey Pekar. ""If you're the kind of person looking for romance or fantasy or escapism,"" Pekar remarks, ""you've got the wrong movie.""
Pekar-never one to shy away from unadorned honesty, either in his life or art-is telling the truth. However, moviegoers who stick around will be rewarded instead with a movie packed with wit, intelligence, feeling, tragedy, comedy and comics.
The husband and wife directors, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, have done a brilliant job putting together the most interesting and riveting recent film based on a comic book, which is strangely about a lonely and mostly angry, real guy.
Harvey Pekar is that guy-a hospital file clerk by day, comic book writer (not artist, Pekar can hardly draw straight lines by his own admission) by night.
The film begins with a telling Halloween trick-or-treat scene from Pekar's childhood. He has decided to go as himself, while all his friends dress as their favorite superheroes. A neighbor giving out candy is confused about Harvey's costume, or lack thereof, and prompts him to slink away in defeat.
In the film, Pekar is truly still playing himself. The filmmakers juxtapose documentary-like interview scenes with the real Pekar with dramatized scenes in which Paul Giamatti does an outstanding job recreating his crankiness and defeatism.
Pekar, in real life and in Giamatti's uncanny portrayal, is an anti-superhero. He is disheveled, pathetic, desperate, lonely-that is to say, real. Toiling away as a dead-end file clerk, Pekar decides to start documenting his real, ordinary, gloomy life.
He gets his break when a chance meeting with legendary comic artist R. Crumb (played by James Urbaniak) leads to Crumb agreeing to draw Pekar's stories. The result is the revolutionary comic book ""American Splendor,"" a comic book that unapologetically portrays the gritty, frustrating and real life of its writer.
""American Splendor"" gains a cult following but fails to save Pekar from his soul-crushing clerkship. Happy endings are not guaranteed with the modicum of fame Pekar gains, either. His marriage to one of ""American Splendor's"" fans, Joyce, played wonderfully by Hope Davis (""About Schmidt""), is turbulent. Then Pekar gets cancer. He also gets regular guest spots on Letterman to plug his comics, but has to withstand Letterman's obvious jokes at his expense until he snaps back on television.
Indeed, this is a brave, inspired film, unafraid to mix the real and tragic with the comic and ultimately endearing cast of social outcasts.
