Congratulations on being the millionth movie title to start with the word "American"!

American Splendor, huh? Yeah, it was alright. There were neat parts. The thing is, there a lot of films that tell a very personal story, that are based on a real life, and I feel like people know the steps Hollywood takes to get from those real stories, to the screen story with which we are presented. We've all been around long enough to be able to spot the fakery. The convenient-for-plot cliches. Characters going to an extreme to move another character along. Condensed dialogue that sounds more like a summary of the person's feelings--would the actual man have actually said those words? It can seem very forced.

Now, American Splendor went out of it's way to make the film more of a scrapbook of Harvey Pekar's life, with several kinds of media coming and going, and Paul Giamatti's portrayal of the man almost a highlight, rather than the focus. It attempted to get closer to the truth of these events, aware (and I'd say content) that any story the writers tell would be just another face on the man, the way lots of artists portrayed him in various slants.

So why did it still seem forced? I watched several actors do an alright job summing up events that could have felt real. Gritty. The way the comics we saw in the film felt. It felt like an HBO movie. Whether it was the directors' tenuous grasp on the actors, or the actors themselves being self-concious about playing real, still-living people (a lot of Giamatti's lines sounded like he was quoting himself--that ain't natural), or the writers (aka the directors) trying to be cute with their portrayal of an unglamorous life. Whatever the ingredients, I felt like I was watching a movie about a real story. Not a real story. So, I guess, it was par, for the early nineties.