Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
An original mix of fiction and reality illuminates the life of comic book hero everyman Harvey Pekar.
American Splendor is a genuinely singular documentary-hybrid that blends live-action dramatization, real-person interview footage, and comic book animation in a way that feels wholly original and earned. Paul Giamatti delivers a career-defining performance as Harvey Pekar, capturing the man's neurotic, curmudgeonly everyman quality with remarkable precision — made all the more striking by the real Harvey appearing alongside him. The plot, such as it is, faithfully and movingly traces the mundane grandeur of an ordinary life made extraordinary through obsessive self-documentation. Cinematography is competent but unremarkable, largely functional in service of the genre-blending structure. The ending is satisfying but not particularly surprising or resonant beyond the gentle dignity it affords Pekar. Novelty is genuinely exceptional — few films have ever interrogated the relationship between a subject, their artistic self-representation, and their fictional portrayal so simultaneously and with such wit.