everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

In the 'slap-in-your-face' category, the winner is Terry Zwigoff's "Crumb", a dispassionate yet humanly intense documentary about cult-cartoonist and counterculture icon Robert Crumb. I confess I didn't know Crumb much but I was raised by comics from the French- Belgian school, and my idols were influenced by "Mad" magazine. In the late 60's, many of them transitioned from youth-oriented to a more adult form of comics. But what makes Robert Crumb, such a groundbreaking pioneer is that he immediately aimed the adult target… and quite low. Crumb's comics were outlets for his wildest and dirtiest masturbatory fetishes: strong, big-legged and big-butted women, some reduced to bent over bare backs, other penetrated from all parts by worm-like little men… there was no holds barred. But it would be too easy to call him a pervert, he's more complex (and fascinating) than that. Like many baby-boomers (he was born in 1943), Crumb did LSD. The drugs guided his pencil and lead to the iconic "Keep On' Truckin", Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat and the Zap Comics that would define the counterculture era like Woodstock for music. He would end up drawing the cover for Janis Joplin's "Cheap Thrills" and become a phenomenon. But Crumb never got along with hippie culture for all that, preferring music from the Great Depression and refused such juicy offers as a Rolling Stones' cover or SNL. You think he was crazy? This is underestimating how efficiently Zwigoff leads this investigation through Crumb's psyche. In fact, Crumb thought he was never liked in the past, so instead of being suddenly loved by selling his soul, he challenged his fans and made himself even more unlikable by being a little truer to himself. Robert Crumb's story is the triumph of inner authenticity, and even in its most vulgar and ugly forms, authenticity is appealing. And the key to this authenticity is Crumb's childhood and this is where the exploration gets interesting, when we're introduced to his lesser known but no-less artist brothers: Charles and Maxon.In fact, they were such preeminent characters in his life that the film could have been called "Crumbs" as we literally get crumbs of their own pains to understand how sometimes, our life is defined by the way we deal with our wounds. And to call the Crumbs a dysfunctional family would be an understatement, the brothers (and two sisters, who refused to take part in the film) lived under the tyranny of an ex-Marine father, an Alpha-male Good-American, who kept arguing with their mother, and was disgusted by the three 'wimps' he raised.There's Maxon, an ascetic painter whose practices go farther than what we usually imagine in Yoga courses. But the true scene-stealer, so to speak, is Charles. He was a promising handsome teen and Robert's first mentor and critic, yet he turned into a social pariah after being humiliated in school and developed an obsession toward child actor from "Treasure Island" movie. Charles seemed to be aware of his own impulses and chose to live in his mother's house, following medical treatment. There is something so resigned, so gentle and intelligent in Charles that you wonder why he didn't try to vent his frustrations on the paper. Well, if one thing, he wasn't Robert. Robert, who was as socially awkward as a teen, wearing thick glasses and missing front teeth, realized that niceness never paid off, not with girls and decided he would make his own self-therapy through drawings. He drew former high-school classmates, also remembering the bullies that poisoned his life. Still, he never played the victim card either, the examination of his own childhood leveraged his vision of life and society, and contributed to create a unique oeuvre, made of intense crosshatching, great winks to the reader, humor, pornography and maybe, misogyny. One of the critics in the film concede that behind this so-called misogyny hides greater insecurities, fears from the boy who didn't match the Alpha-male standards, a deliberate need to escape from suffocating and hypocritical puritanism and rigid moral codes. The same goes with his pictures of black people, what Crumb does is reflecting our own personal fantasies and fears, those we secretly hide, because we want to look normal, but who said the norm was a key to happiness? All along through the documentary, you see Crumb behaving in the most awkward and abrupt way, flirting with one of his admirers, refusing to sign an autograph, laughing at Charles' heartbreaking comments about his failed suicide attempts or his secret desire for a lobotomy, he kind of passes as a rude, non-empathetic and ultimately unlikable person, but he's truly "Mr Natural", and this is the most inspirational aspect of his personality, to the point it made me question my own past and insecurities starting with the glasses, a life-changing curse. Like Crumb, I had some shameful appetites targeting isolated parts, like Crumb, it was only through drawing that I could flirt with popularity, I even remember that whenever I had a possibility to kiss a girl, I brought some drawings to impress her. That's how awkward it was. But there's two ways to cope with such a past, you try to repress it, to hate what you were and be a better person, ending up hating yourself even more, or use the past as the revelation of your inner self and go ahead, without giving a damn to what people think.Crumb did, he's a legend now, and I guess he doesn't care much. (This review is dedicated to the late Ebert and Siskel. Indeed, if it wasn't for their rave reviews and the film topping their annual Top 10 lists in 1995 (#1 for Siskel, #2 for Ebert), I'd never have heard about "Crumb", documentary and artist, so this is one of the cases where I can fully appreciate the value of critics in movie industry.)

Documentaries rarely get to the true heart of their subject, at least, none more than Crumb, Terry Zwigoff's passion piece on the work and soul of one Robert Crumb, comic-book innovator, serial piggy-back rider and loather of practically everything modern. The notoriously reclusive Crumb, who self-proclaims that he doesn't like to interact with people he isn't completely comfortable with, would normally be a near- impossible target for any self-respecting documentary film-maker to get even an interview out of. But life-long friend Terry Zwigoff, who reportedly threatened to kill himself if Crumb wouldn't allow him to film him, achieves an immaculately intimate portrayal of what drives the man, and how this strange and often extremely dark-humoured man came to be.Born in 1943 and growing up closely with his brother Charles and Maxon (he also has two sisters who declined to be interviewed), the brother's developed an early fascination with comic-books, mainly thanks to Charles' obsession with the medium. Living with a tyrannical father who often beat them, the three boys grew up extremely damaged and socially inept. Charles was good-looking but, as he describes, there was "just something wrong about me,", but Robert would use these experiences as amusing pieces in his sketches. As he got older, Robert wrote for Zap! Comics, and was one of the front-runners in the underground comic-book scene, where he developed the Keep on Truckin' serial, as well as his most famous characters Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat.Given what seems like unprecedented access to Crumb, Zwigoff doesn't bombard the film with archive footage or talking head interviews (though there is a bit of the latter), he instead allows the story to be told by Crumb interacting with his family and friends, who all seem to regard the man with a lot of love, regardless as to how damaging he has been to their lives. We meet his two brothers - Charles still lives at home with his mother in a room piled high with literature, discussing his inability to get an erection due to the vast amounts of medication he has been given, and Maxon, having recently discovered his own artistic potential, is compelled to sit publicly on a bed of nails and pass linen through his body to cleanse his intestines. This isn't your typical all- American family.Which makes it interesting is that the idea of a husband happily greeting his wife and kids after a hard day's work to sit down to a wholesome dinner in middle-class suburbia, became one of the focal points of Crumb's work. It is something that obviously appals and amuses him, this idea of 1950's all-American perfection where consumerism took centre-stage and capitalism reared it's ugly head. He frequently refers back to a simpler time, where America lay relatively untouched, when people's problems were real and poured their souls into the blues songs he so obsessively loves and collects. His piece A Brief History of America, where a peaceful and green bit of land slowly gets taken apart and replaced by all manners of ugly wires, pylon's and advertising boards, shown here in the film, is especially powerful.Zwigoff isn't afraid to show the dark and ugly side of Crumb either. Shown sketching random passers-by on the street, he formidably judges and satirises them without uttering a word to them. This is a man whose opinion of humanity is nigh-on misanthropy, voicing his disgust at the brands and slogans people feel compelled to wear. His work also went places that most people would leave untouched, such as N****r Hearts, where a perfect, all-white family sit down to a dinner of African- American organs, or the sketch in which a man and his friend rape a woman with no head (later revealed to have been simply pushed down within her). He's certainly a troubled man, but all great geniuses are, or at least should be, and Crumb the film lays it out on the table. Undoubtedly one of the greatest documentaries ever made.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Here is a well done documentary of a very strange man named Robert Crumb who rose to fame as a cartoonist. His comics are off-beat, sometimes racist and almost always degrading to women. There is no disputing any of this from even Robert Crumb himself. Crumb just claims that all this stuff is inside him and needs to come out through his pencil. I actually admire this kind of truthful approach. Filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Federico Fellini come to mind as two others who put a lot of themselves in their work, although they do it on film and not paper. Robert Crumb became popular in the 60's for his psychedelic comics of the time including ZAP comics, one of his most popular. He has two brothers, Charles and Maxon who can also draw well but have had no real success with it. It's hard to believe but seeing these two brothers makes you actually realize that Robert was the "normal" one in the family! Definitely a scary thought. Has success gone to Robert's head? The answer is no. He consistently turns down offers from Hollywood that would make him very rich. Although I admire things about him, I found him kind of a jerk from how he treated other people. One instance is when someone says they love his work and would like an autograph and Crumb wouldn't even look at him and basically just let out his usual defensive laugh. What is curious though is that his wife, son and daughter seem almost well adjusted. Interesting. This movie is an interesting look into a strange artists life which delves into his tough upbringing to see just where all his twisted ideas come from. The DVD itself comes with a commentary by Roger Ebert and other goodies. Good Stuff!

Fascinating but a tad overrated documentary. The Life of seriously disturbed comic book artist R. Crumb is discussed in this low-budget documentary from the filmmaker that brought us 'Ghost World' and 'Art School Confidedntial'. My largest complaint with the movie is it is a tad too long. Crumb is an interesting fellow and there's a lot of interesting things to tell about his life through interviews with him and his two extremely neurotic and creepy brothers Maxon and Charles, but it just gets a tad old after the first hour of the movie. Creepy doesn't even begin to describe it though. These people really unsettled me, as I think they were supposed to. Crumb is described as a sexual introvert, someone so uncomfortable and nervous about his sexuality and he deals with it by writing his extremely violent, misogynistic and racist cartoons. At the end of the film you'll want to wish you'll never encounter this disturbed individual or his deranged family. Interesting viewing, but again it drags a bit for my taste. Grade: B