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Everything about American Splendor is great, except for the movie. Great concept, great source, great promotional campaign, great cast, great everything. Just kind of a "meh" on the movie, is all. And you know what? It's almost overlookable. The rest of the stuff is just that great.

Funny but soulless, artful yet godless, American Splendor exists in a strange meta-state that is both its greatest feat and its biggest problem. No film has danced in and around the constraints of reality vs. fiction to this degree since the late-60s work of good ol' Jean-Luc Godard himself. It's kind of fun, in a kinky sort of way - the internal logic is flawless, and the way the film simply refuses to let you sink back into the narrative is appreciably relentless... if not ever at all relaxing. Harvey Pecar states early on that this isn't the usual escapist crap - but then, neither is my life. Being fully familiar with the constraints of my life, I don't mind seeing a comic book movie once in a while that's about people in spandex who do slightly more interesting things than building web sites and blogging their days away.

American Splendor's chosen art form is nihilism, and in that, it gets top marks. The problem is, of course, that good nihilism is as useless as nipples on a station wagon. When it's working, you feel nothing. Yay for the nihilism.

The flick is so dedicatedly about exploring one of the most repugnantly self-destructive people ever put on film, that when it does pick up a few humanizing elements in the last reel - a victorious struggle against cancer; a tow-headed moppet child to warm the household - it feels all the more cheap for what has come before. Ten minutes ago, Pecar was on Letterman, ranting about selling out... and now, he's holding hands with an adorable 11-year-old?

The leads - Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis - are so good in their roles that when the filmmakers frame both the actors and the real people in the same shot, I watched the actors. Giamatti's so good at this role, in fact, that by the end of the film, I kinda hated him. His Harvey Pecar is nothing short of monstrous, which is of course entirely what it should be, but that doesn't make for much audience identification or empathy.

Fortunately, American Splendor is funny enough that I enjoyed it in spite of itself. Again, a lot of the humour comes from Giamatti's performance, who can do more with a held pause or an angry look than the writers can do with two pages of script. But there are also some keenly observed moments and gags that keep things light and entertaining even as the guts are beginning to churn.

In a year rife with comic book movies, I think a flick like American Splendor had to be made. Like The Hulk, ironically enough, it's a movie that is not great, but is interesting. Maybe these comic book superheroes - the short slouchy man and the big green monster - aren't so far apart after all?