american splendor (2003)
			directors:  shari springer berman & robert pulcini paul giamatti, hope davis james urbaniak, harvey pekar judah friedlander unfashionable observations rating: A-				American Splendor tells the story of Harvey Pekar—a funny man with a funny name.  As a file clerk working at a Cleveland Veterans hospital, Pekar’s life is as mundane as it sounds.  However, this doesn’t stop him from writing it all down.  Surprisingly, what results is nothing short of comic genius. Harvey Pekar is the miscreant’s everyman.  His life is what we all fear: it is the kind of life we try to avoid; it is the kind of life that losers live.  His home is a dirty, unkempt, tiny apartment.  His clothes are raggedy and unwashed.  His hair is going, and indeed so is his voice.  And his love life is, of course, utterly nonexistent. When Harvey Pekar wakes up everyday, he wakes up to problems, mistakes, and regrets.  Of course, viewers of the film will naturally be quick to judge such a character.  His very countenance—pained and distraught—demands that we look at him with a mixture of pity and disgust.  But in doing so, we would be shown to be no better off than Pekar himself.  This is because Pekar, although exquisitely self-aware of his state of being, is nonetheless humored by it—so much so that he cannot help but team up with comic-book artist Robert Crumb to document his everyday existence in a comic book by the name of American Splendor.  The title of Pekar’s comic book couldn’t be more apt.  Even though he characterizes his outlook as one of “gloom and doom,” we can never escape the fact that Pekar is a man that is distinctly able to laugh at himself.  This is precisely what redeems Harvey Pekar as the American anti-hero par excellence.  He may have a crappy life, but he has a sense of humor about it.  And in this world of cynical materialists, that’s more than most people can say of themselves. Paul Giamatti delivers a breakthrough performance as Harvey Pekar.  This character fits him like a glove, and he is a pleasure to watch.  Filmed in a pseudo-documentary style, with the real Harvey Pekar narrating and appearing intermittently throughout the film, American Splendor is at once funny, engaging, honest, tragic, and stylistically inventive.  One truly cannot ask for much more. I’d give Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s American Splendor an A-.
	Unfashionable Observations © 2003