Years before 'Ghost World', Terry Zwigoff first made a name for himself with this documentary about Robert Crumb, author of 'Fritz the Cat' and other raunchy comic strips. The film strikes a nice balance between interviews and montages of Crumb's work; a lot of time is spent on the camera gliding over the inventive images that Crumb generated over the years. His images are provocative and Zwigoff again strikes a great balance between interviewing those who hate his work (believing it sexist, racist and worse) and those who think he is misunderstood. Crumb himself gives sadly little insight into the rhyme and reason behind his work. Early on, he claims to never work with "conscious messages" and later on he admits to having no idea where the inspiration came for a fake advert. Crumb's brothers are also interviewed, and while Robert is the famous one, it is Charles and Maxon who are the most intriguing. Both seem disturbed, whereas Robert is actually well-adjusted and happily married with a doting preteen daughter (though his choice to make her watch 'Goodfellas' is odd). It is hard not to wonder how different the film may have been with Charles and Maxon more in focus. Charles was in fact an accomplished artist himself but unable to ever restrain himself, while Maxon has some perversions, almost as odd as those seen in Robert's comics. 'Crumb' is an interesting documentary either way and even if one finds some of Robert's images offensive, there is no denying the artistry and imagination required to come up with such bizarre concoctions.

I always hated R. Crumb's comics, finding them misogynistic and racist and weird and unfunny. In my factory-town hippie youth, the boys who found them funny were boys I avoided. (I never met a girl or black person who did like them, though a few may exist.) So you'd think I might hate this movie, or not want to watch it, or that this review would be negative. But no. I love a good documentary and this is not merely good; it's a great one, directed by film genius Terry Zwigoff. Crumb the movie riveted me, showing me an intricate portrait of a complex man. This is not a short movie, but I was always engaged--great pacing and editing, surprising and revealing choices of scenes.To me what it says about "art" (or craft) is far less important than what it says about this one man.Crumb had a childhood that looks worse than the worst horror film I've ever seen. Bad father, bat**** crazy mother, and three genius boys that I suppose may carry the crazy gene too. As Zwigoff takes us into that bizarre home and the lives of the other brothers, we come to see that R. Crumb's art and life is a triumph of the human spirit, a flower blooming out of burbling sewage. To me, it's not an attractive flower, rather a noisome and homely thing, but dang it, a flower, and I ended up applauding him for doing so well with such beginnings.No matter how crazy your family is, you leave this film thinking, wow, thanks Mom and Dad for not being anywhere near this bad. Your own tiny neuroses will seem charming and mild in comparison to the brothers'. You leave the film with the sense that all things are possible--if Crumb did this with his life despite what you now know, what the heck is holding you back?And if a film can change people, even for a short time, this one has the capacity to make you more understanding of the worst people you meet. What if they had this much baggage? How can you possibly know what made them what they are? Everyone is doing the best s/he can, and while some days that seems like bad news, after watching the film, it feels like good news.

Primarily: You are in the presence of a master creating and displaying his art, and throughout these portions of the film any kind of artist will find much to learn from this man. The comparison made that he is the "modern" Dürer is very apt.Secondarily: You are watching one the most humorous and (blackly) entertaining films ever produced anywhere. Yes, we are reassured once again that an (the) artists' personality(ies) cannot never be confused with or substituted for the work they have give us; the strongest humor comes from the aon-old maxim the truth is stranger than fiction...p.s. One last thing - had seen this piece over a decade ago, but a recent review of Crumb's 2009 outstanding "Genesis" work led back here and there to review. If you haven't read it yet do it tonight/day!

"Crumb" is an amazing documentary about an extraordinary artist. Most great movies are great because they carry kernels of truth: Fellini on sexual desire and repression, The Godfather on the vagaries of morality and business, Casablanca of things bigger than ourselves, the great (anti)war movies on how politicians and generals coldly manipulate young men and ultimately murder them, etc., etc... But the classics are stylized accounts with kernels of truth. "Crumb," in contrast, is truth through and through uncompromisingly laid open. You don't realize how rare truth is until you finally see it.Crumb's own oeuvre is a study in truth, inhabited by a menagerie of characters that haunt his subconscious: rigid "White Man," farcical hippie guru Mr. Natural, Amazonian Angel McSpade, the subhumans who beat up his brother as adolescents, and his own self-pitying self.When he became a counter culture hero, Crumb promptly put the would-be worshipers at arm's length with his openly "perverse" sexual comics. He lampooned America and its critics alike, though "lampoon" isn't quite the right word, for his powerful critiques are frequently wordless, midnight black humor, if it's humor at all (see, for example, his History of America at www.zubeworld.com/crumbmuseum/history1.html). He drew what he felt and never sold-out, even turning down a commission to draw a Rolling Stones album cover because he didn't think much of their music. During the filming of the movie, he and his wife are moving to the south of France because America has become just too ugly, commercial and crass.Interviewed in the film, he and his brothers acknowledge being unpopular wimps, abused by their father and many of their peers. Underlying the truth in his work lay the truth of his life and family, exposed with embarrassing candor. His older brother and mother never leave their small, poor home, though they have nothing in common so they just maintain an uneasy truce. His younger brother lives as a monk, drawing a long linen tape through his body to clean his intestines while sitting on a bed of nails. Neither brother has ever had sex.Crumb, it's clear, loves them, and it's a painful, poignant love because he's also detached. What can he do after all, except accept them? His work too, is poignantly portrayed: at one point he sits semi-autistic listening to soulful old records (he's a collector), with a slow panning over a collage of haunting illustrations.Crumb is routinely referred to as a pervert. And of course his family is deeply disturbed. But so is much of America. And so is much of the world. Psychiatrist Alfred Adler observed that "The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." So of course Crumb is not normal. He has allowed us to know him.