I just read schild's review of
http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1076486358&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&">American Splendor and I have to disagree.
I thought the movie was very good, just a bit short of excellent. The actor's portrayals of the characters is just amazing. When you first see Judah Friedlander (Toby) his geek performance is so over-the-top that it seems too funny to be true, but then later in the film we meet the real Toby in interviews and MTV clips and Friedlander's portayal is spot on.
I personally found the movie to be very funny, then again it matched my sense of humor. To describe the humor in the movie think of Seinfeld with less cheeriness and much more self-loathing.
Schild also questions why the movie was made as Pekar doesn't seem that interesting. I think that's the whole point. Pekar, as uninteresting as he is, created (with R. Crumb) a whole new genre of comic books. American Splendor the comic book is again just like Seinfeld. It's about nothing other than day to day life. It has no superhero, no real action, just a comic book about an average guy dealing with everyday issues.
The movie also has a lot of heart which is difficult to describe. Pekar is a nobody file-clerk who steps up and does something interesting. He connects through his comic book with people just like him. The whole cancer story that Schild dismisses is there to illustrate who Pekar is, he chronicles his dealings with cancer through his comic book and shares it with the world. Not exactly your standard comic book material and not exactly your standard reaction to being diagnosed with cancer.
I will however admit to being partially biased toward the movie seeing as it was filmed in Cleveland with portions of it being less than 5 blocks from my house. The fiancee and I actually stumbled on part of the filming one night when we went out to rent a movie. I started driving toward Hollywood Video until I realized Detroit road was blocked off so I drove back home, parked the car, and we decided to walk up to HV to see what was going on. As we got closer to Detroit Theatre we saw that the sign had been changed to read "Revenge of the Nerds". We stood around a little bit but watching a movie being filmed is kind of like watching paint dry. I didn't find out until later that the filming was for American Splendor. It probably made the film more interesting as throughout the movie we could play spot-the-location as we figured out where each scene was filmed.
Even without that I would still recommend seeing the movie if you have a chance.
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