Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
90
(42 sources)
90
(42 sources)
-
100
San Francisco Chronicle
It's a humane and witty treatment of an average life that, incidentally, speaks to the worth and inherent drama of average lives. Read Full Review » -
100
Boston Globe
The movie is pricelessly comic -- the Harvey/Joyce scenes catalog the couple's neuroses with glee -- but it just as often reaches for something richer. Read Full Review » -
100
Wall Street Journal
Pirandello didn't have a patch on its complexities. Here's a popular entertainment with an eclectic soundtrack raising penetrating questions of identity in astonishing sequences that interweave live action with comic-book art. Read Full Review » -
100
USA Today
Produced by HBO but too good not to play theaters, this soon-to-be minor classic is the best movie about society's untrendiest since "Ghost World" exactly two years ago. Read Full Review » -
100
Chicago Sun-Times
This film is delightful in the way it finds its own way to tell its own story. There was no model to draw on, but Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who wrote and directed it, have made a great film by trusting to Pekar's artistic credo. Read Full Review » -
100
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100
Christian Science Monitor
Filmed and acted to near perfection, it's one of the year's most innovative and exciting pictures. Read Full Review » -
100
Entertainment Weekly
American Splendor presents Pekar as drawn on the page, Pekar as brilliantly interpreted by Paul Giamatti, and the actual Pekar, in the double role of narrator and interview subject -- sometimes all at once. The magic act is thrilling, and truly surprising. Read Full Review » -
100
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91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In the world of comic-book movies, American Splendor is the real deal, the warts-and-all adventures of the most unlikely hero on the comic stands. Read Full Review » -
91
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90
Washington Post
The genius of the film is its utter commitment to the Pekar point of view. Read Full Review » -
90
Variety
Sad, tender, wise and beautiful film... It's a profound tribute to lives lived on the fringes of society -- to the introspective loners who are the most observant chroniclers of our times. Read Full Review » -
90
Film Threat
One of the most wildly original, dryly comical, and smartly structured films ever created. Read Full Review » -
90
Salon.com
A narrative picture with many of the qualities of a documentary, not to mention a comic book -- is one of those rare, inventively made movies that isn't so taken with its own novelty it loses sight of its characters. Its warmth is for real, and it enwraps you. Read Full Review » -
90
The New Yorker
That is the quiet triumph of American Splendor: behind the playfulness, it cleaves to an oddly old-fashioned belief that a life, even a life as mangy as Mr. Pekar’s, gains in depth and darkness when it is crosshatched with the imaginary. The nerd needs no revenge. [18 & 25 August 2003, p. 150] Read Full Review » -
90
LA Weekly
It’s our great good fortune, and Pekar's, that this movie -- which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, followed by the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes -- is as true to the dyspeptic spirit of its source as anyone could have imagined. Read Full Review » -
90
Dallas Observer
A 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. Read Full Review » -
90
Newsweek
A painfully funny movie. There’s nothing in the history of movie courtship quite like the first meeting between Pekar and his future wife and fellow depressive, Joyce Brabner. Read Full Review » -
90
New York Magazine
It would be a mistake to regard American Splendor as an anthem for the common man. It is the UNCOMMON that is being celebrated here. Read Full Review » -
90
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90
Film Threat
Though it has many moments of sarcasm and humor, the overall tone, like the comics themselves, is a depressing one. Read Full Review » -
90
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89
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88
Charlotte Observer
A feature film as odd, personal and sometimes mundane as his (Pekar) comics. Read Full Review » -
88
New York Post
Davis, a hugely underrated actress..., is deadpan perfection as Joyce, wearing oversized glasses and a wig that makes her look like an older version of Thora Birch's character in "Ghost World." Read Full Review » -
88
Miami Herald
American Splendor reminds you that sometimes, simply getting out of bed each morning can be the most heroic of acts. Read Full Review » -
88
Rolling Stone
Not your typical biopic. But it is one of the best times you'll have at the movies this year. Read Full Review » -
88
New York Daily News
As inventive as "Being John Malkovich," as psychologically quirky as "Ghost World" and as honest as the day is long. Read Full Review » -
88
ReelViews
American Splendor is deserving of accolades, not only because it tells an interesting story about a fascinating man, but because it does so with such freedom and freshness. I wish more of the comic book-inspired movies were like this. Read Full Review » -
88
Philadelphia Inquirer
The film has the dog-eared look of a homemade valentine and the improvised sound of '60s jazz, courtesy of a score by Mark Suozzo and a spirited soundtrack including Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar," which might be the film's anthem. Read Full Review » -
88
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88
Chicago Tribune
Such a stylistic inconsistency might be bothersome in another film, but here it's just part of the texture. Read Full Review » -
88
Baltimore Sun
One genuine small triumph of American Splendor is that the title isn't ironic. The movie is a splendid, inventive piece of urban Americana about that hardboiled original, Harvey Pekar. Read Full Review » -
80
Slate
The film isn't in the same key as Pekar's comic: The tempo is buoyant, puckish, and even more "meta" than the original. Read Full Review » -
80
Los Angeles Times
Biographies of living people are tricky if for no other reason than a biographer can sometimes feel protective of his or her subject. Berman and Pulcini obviously adore Pekar, but by not getting out of his head more often and taking him on his own harsh terms, they blow the chance to dig as deep as the source. Read Full Review » -
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
With a lovably cantankerous sense of humor and an honest strain of hard realism and pathos, the film thrives on the tension that comes from an artist who devotes himself to the truth, but watches his image get away from him. Read Full Review » -
80
The New York Times
There's as much at stake in the hilarious, moody and cantankerous film adaptation of "Splendor" as there was in this summer's other movies of comic-book antiheroes like "The Hulk" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." Read Full Review » -
80
Chicago Reader
I can't say that this feature by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, about the life and art of Harvey Pekar, made me want to run out and buy his comic books, but it does offer a highly interesting and original introduction to them. Read Full Review » -
80
Empire
It's an hilarious, touching reminder that, sometimes, ordinary folk have the world's most interesting lives. Read Full Review » -
70
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60
TV Guide
Pekar's autobiographical chronicle of day-to-day banality is a rich, if dingy, tapestry of ordinary life in all its infinite, homely peculiarity, which filmmakers Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini bring to uniquely eccentric life. Read Full Review »
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