Hope Davis as Joyce Pekar and Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar in American Splendor
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+ another review by Cynthia Fuchs
Offbeat Roots
Check it out, a comic-turned-film without the Marvel logo out front. Sure, there was the recent, sloppy adaptation of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but American Splendor comes from a genuine underground comic of the same name. In the wake of League's mixed bag, it may be just what other less traditional comics need to prove they can tough it out on the big screen.
American Splendor is the autobiographical work of Cleveland's Harvey Pekar: he writes it, and many artists have drawn it. Robert Crumb was the first; the two men met through their passion for collecting old records, and the cartoonist encouraged Pekar, a file clerk at a veterans' hospital, to chronicle his working-stiff exploits. He did, and even as a published author, he never left Cleveland or the filing job.
A few decades later, Pekar is a cult figure, and comics are all over multiplexes. Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman's film of American Splendor is upfront about its sources: the real Pekar makes several documentary-ish appearances, and various cartoon incarnations pop up from time to time, alongside his filmic self (Paul Giamatti). Frames sometimes dissolve into comic panels, like a charmingly low-tech version of Ang Lee's Hulk wizardry. Happily, these shifts are never distracting. When future wife Joyce (Hope Davis) meets Pekar for the first time after reading his comics, they both worry about which Pekar she'll get, and we see several cartoon versions hanging out at the Cleveland airport. The "real" Pekar (that is, Giamatti's incarnation) is, of course, all and none of them at once (it is the flesh version who immediately informs her of his vasectomy).
The casting for comics films tends toward up-and-coming U.S. actors (Toby Maguire, Ben Affleck) or lesser known Australians (Hugh Jackman, Eric Bana), with the occasional regal old guy (Patrick Stewart, Sean Connery). Appropriate to its offbeat roots, American Splendor shines a spotlight on Giamatti as Pekar. Although he's had choice bit parts in dozens of movies, I don't always smile to myself when Giamatti is onscreen, as I do during appearances of Steve Buscemi, Luis Guzmán or Christopher Walken; Giamatti can lapse into hamminess in his thinner roles (see Planet of the Apes and Storytelling). But his look of constant displeasure, contorted into irritation here, is perfect for Harvey Pekar. Shuffling around, hunched over, he's an uncanny distillation of the real Pekar and his comics counterparts.
Like many movies about real-life creative eccentrics, Splendor has an unfortunate tendency to indulge in awkward dialogue explaining or praising its subject. On more than one occasion, characters remark that Pekar's writing is groundbreaking in the world of comics, and the movie would work just as well (maybe better) without anyone pointing that out. This minor problem is reminiscent of the Andy Kaufman biography, Man on the Moon (1999), costarring Giamatti. But, like the earlier film, American Splendor inhabits and believes in its protagonist's world to such a degree that we forgive such extra back patting.
If any previous film's shadow hangs over this one, it's Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (2001), similarly based on a comic book dealing with the ennui of ordinary life. Splendor is a return to that film's obsessive collectors, depressing cityscapes, and sustained cynicism. Like Zwigoff's film, it features a cast of oddballs, including Hope Davis (excellent as Joyce) and Judah Friedlander (hilarious as Toby, Harvey's nerdy coworker). But Splendor's allegiance to its real-life origins makes it both more unusual and less absorbing than Ghost World.
That's not to say that American Splendor doesn't include astonishing moments. Giamatti delivers a short monologue in front of pencil-drawn backgrounds on names in a phonebook, and it's sort of stunning, that something so brief sticks in your head the rest of the night. Another scene, where Pekar tells Toby about his impending marriage (and Toby tells Pekar about his new favorite movie, Revenge of the Nerds), is also short and oddly wonderful: they can't look at each other, and yet, they reveal that they share a desperate sort of intimacy. American Splendor isn't perfect, but it has perfect moments.
— 22 August 2003
