American Splendor

Rating

Director

Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

Screenplay

Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini (Comic: Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner)

Length

1h 41m

Starring

Paul Giamatti, Daniel Tay, Donald Logue, Hope Davis, Molly Shannon, Judah Friedlander, James Urbaniak, Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, Toby Radloff, Earl Billings, Maggie Moore, James McCaffrey, Madylin Sweeten, Gary Dumm, Eytan Mirsky, Josh Hutcherson, Chris Ambrose, Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

MPAA Rating

R

Review

Where does the artwork end and the artist begin? American Splendor looks to explore the notion while creating both arresting answers and darkly comical conundrums.

Paul Giamatti gets one of his most inspired roles as the simulacrum of real life underground artist Harvey Pekar, a man whose work is exceptionally eclectic. Shifting back-and-forth in time as it explores Harvey’s journey from lonely curmudgeon to celebrated comic artist, it’s adapted from a comic by Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner. The story unfolds in unique ways, blending animation and live action breaking boundaries in the process.

Covering several years of Pekar’s life, Pekar himself shows up as the unreliable narrator of his own story, providing needed context to the events transpiring in the film. With the real life personage to compare against, it’s easy to see how masterful Giamatti’s performance is, a nearly spot-on impression of the crass, sarcastic figure. Pekar isn’t a likeable character. He’s combative, aggressive, and egocentric. He rarely gets along with those around him, forcing them to adhere to his outlook on life while failing to see the failures in his own. It provides intense and biting criticism of the world around him even if his approach is grating.

Giamatti has long been one of the greatest working character actors and while he’s fallen into a rut in recent years of similar characters, Harvey Pekar is an exemplary early performance that showcases the skill he would often employ in later productions even while putting forth familiar work. The film hinges on Giamatti presenting Pekar as a flawed and frustrating figure while preventing the character and his story from becoming too awash in his own ego driven worldview.

Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini adapt the Pekar/Brabner comic book in a fresh and invigorating way, challenging the limitations and boundaries of blended animation/live-action work, establishing a style reminiscent of the source material while keeping its cinematic quality. The blend of media has been done well in the past, most notably during Disney’s 1960s/70s heyday as well as later works from other studios, but the limitation has always been its inability to feel like the components mesh perfectly. They ultimately resist the desire to insert them for the sake of insertion and rely on helping those moments punctuate the action taking place. It isn’t so much a shift from one medium to the next as it is a melding of the two in unique ways.

American Splendor is an engaging biopic that finds a way to bring its various parts together without belaboring any points. Yet, it remains a flawed film. It has a brisk running time but feels far lengthier. The character never overcomes his harsh and ideologically aggressive posture while giving us the freedom to see his skill in spite of his flaws. He’s a controversial figure but one that we the audience eventually understands and even if we can’t excuse his behavior, we can at least understand how that ties into his creative energy and historical relevance.

Review Written

June 18, 2026