As a card-carrying comic nerd, I am sad to say I'm not familiar with the comic series "American Splendor" as one of the critically lauded staples of the industry. The film, however, was, as a friend of mine used to say, "fuckin' tits." That is a positive statement. It also does not mean that there are any tits in the movie. This film is distinctively NOT about tits. "Fuckin' tits" is just an expression that may not be entirely apropos for this film.

The comic broke new ground as being just a kvetchy, cantankerous and depressed guy in Cleveland named Harvey Pekar writing the bare-bones, no-gloss-applied nuts and bolts of his life and getting some guys who can draw to do all the illustrations. It's entirely autobiographical and isn't going for cheap laughs or building himself into something he's not. His intelligent comic (or at least what I've read since I've seen the film) can get dreary, boring, funny, wordy, and sad, but it's a pull-no-punches and capture-the-minutiae look at the life of what a lot of people would call a "sad sack." Or at least the people who still call people "sad sacks" would. Despite all the critical acclaim and David Letterman guest spots his stories earn, he never has been able to make a living as anything more than a file clerk at a hospital, and that drives him up the wall and makes him miserable and defeatist. Pathos galore, and it somehow winds up being a fascinating story.

The film version of this guy's life takes a strange hybrid approach - a good deal of it is played out like standard film fare with comic book flair, and interspersed throughout are actual documentary-like interviews with Pekar and his real-life family and friends. It creates a weird dissonance at first, almost devaluing the efforts made by the actual cast, but it doesn't happen so often that it ruins anything, and enough time is given to the actors overall to make it all work, and the real Harvey tends to chime in only when you want him to, or if certain things need a bit of clarification that dramatic license won't allow.

Harvey's a weird cat, and his story is quirky and off-beat enough to keep things consistently interesting. Check this one out.