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"American Splendor" is part of a curious new genre of movies about oddballs who manage to triumph and find a place
in the world without changing their oddball nature -- gentle films about unexpected tolerance and unlikely triumphs. "Napoleon
Dynamite" (the best of these) and "Saved" are other examples. In these films, things go startlingly right
for the social losers -- in this case, real-life autobiographical cartoon writer Harvey Pekar, brilliantly and hilariously
played by Paul Giamatti. It is another variant of full-frontal decency, I guess -- a growing and somewhat subversive trend
in movies to present humane values so frankly and unapologetically that it shocks us, as full-frontal nudity once shocked
us. ("Titanic" marked the emergence of this trend, and signaled that the age of cynicism was dying -- though the
message hasn't gotten through to everybody.) The mode runs the risk of getting sappy and Pollyanna-ish at times, and "American
Splendor" (like "Saved") suffers this fate by the end, winding up in an almost icky climax of sentimentality.
But it's funny and often moving right up to that point.
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