American Splendor
American Splendor

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- 74/100 based on 51,143 votes

Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland's thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring... (Full plot summary below)

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Actors in American Splendor:

Paul Giamatti
Hope Davis
Judah Friedlander
James Urbaniak
Earl Billings
James McCaffrey

Full Plot Details

Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland's thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the rare joy of a 25-cent find. It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb finds international success for his underground comics, the idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey's true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey's cult celebrity stature.

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Movie Reviews

Shadows on the Wall - 10/10 by Rich ClineCleverly and joyfully blurs the lines of real life with various dramatised versions of it.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - 10/10 by Duane DudekBerman and Pulcini, documentary filmmakers making their narrative debut, have made a work as unvarnished as their subject.
Dallas Observer - 10/10 by Robert WilonskyA 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.
Sacramento News & Review - 10/10 by Jim LaneThe film's style is as unorthodox as the original comic book, and just as funny and true.
Sydney Morning Herald - 10/10 by Paul ByrnesHarvey's virtues are less obvious, but American Splendor eventually makes his old-fashioned American cussedness seem like a form of heroism.
Charlotte Observer - 10/10 by Lawrence ToppmanA feature film as odd, personal and sometimes mundane as his (Pekar) comics.
Cinerina - 10/10 by Karina MontgomeryIt's a self-reflexive paean to a self-reflexive peon who happened to turn lemonade into lemons and rocked the indie comic world.
Aisle Seat - 10/10 by Mike McGranaghanAmerican Splendor is one of the best cinematic depictions of an artist and his work that I ever recall seeing.
ReelTalk Movie Reviews - 10/10 by Betty Jo TuckerPaul Giamatti seems to crawl into Harvey Pekar's skin. While not resembling Pekar physically, he's got that curmudgeonly attitude down pat.
Window to the Movies - 10/10 by Jeffrey ChenMakes a good case for the constructiveness of working out the questions, issues, and problems one faces in life through the output of art.

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