IMDb user comments for
Crumb (1994) More at IMDbPro »

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 9:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Index

83 comments in total

---

35 out of 38 people found the following comment useful :-
Bordering On Sanity, 18 April 2001

Author: Karl Self from Yurp

After reading the couple of negative reviews of "Crumb" on IMDB I re - viewed the movie one more time just to make sure that the many times when I had seen this movie before, on the silver screen and on video, I have not been in a state of delusion. With the movie fresh in my mind I want to put out this message to all the people who have made depreciating statements such as "what is Crumb moaning about, he's famous now", "the Sixties weren't really like that", "it was just two hours of whining, rambling and unjustified complaining" etc. etc.: go back to your Kevin Costner, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise big budget Oscar winners, and stop smearing dirt on one of the best documentaries ever made. So frigging what if it's shot with a hand - held camera and without studio lighting? "Crumb" is the real thing, it does not need any trickery or gloss. Basically it shows Robert Crumb, the artist famous for "Keep On Truckin'", "Fritz The Cat" (though he does not like to be associated with either of them) and "Mr. Natural", telling the story of his life through his wife and brothers, with a few scenes of him at a vernissage and a comic book store (etc.) thrown in for good measure. Call it a modern - day version of the van Gogh - story, or a look at the darker (or even just the non - Warner - Brothers) side of the flower - power generation, the human condition, the power of art, the battle of the sexes, a case history of mental illness, psychotic families, whatever. The story, and with it the film, is amazing and totally captivating. I have watched it many times and intend to watch it many times over. Give it a miss only if you expect some good, clean, family entertainment, but do so at your loss.

---

26 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
Strange and interesting study of a warped genius, 28 September 2004
Author: world_of_weird from England

Robert Crumb must have had a bellyful of people calling him a genius, but that's exactly what he is. Having grown up a bullied, miserable child - and an anachronism almost from the start, with his interests in pop culture ephemera and old-time music - in a dysfunctional family (his father was an overbearing tyrant, his mother an amphetamine addict, his older brother so obsessed with comics that he forces his siblings to draw them), Crumb escaped this drudgery by fleeing to Cleveland, where he first became a staff artist for a greetings card company, then one of their most innovative and prolific designers, before relocating to San Fransisco. His initial impetus was to "get some of that free love stuff", but his pen ran away with his thoughts and he wound up virtually launching the underground comics movement. Between 1968 and 1993, Crumb produced some of the funniest, most outrageous, licentious and flat-out brilliant comic book work of all time, and this film is an invaluable insight into the man behind the madness and the mayhem. Turns out Crumb, despite his bizarre appearance (he's stick thin, wears Coke-bottle spectacles and dresses like a character actor from a 1930s comedy) and sexual deviance (he likes nothing more than hefty haunches and big, strong legs in a woman), is something of an everyman - he's married, dotes on his understanding wife and gifted daughter, and feels just as alienated from the 'evils' of modern living as the rest of us sensitive intellectuals! At first glance, of course, Crumb is as weird as they come, but the sight of the aforementioned older brother Charles (a reclusive crank who rarely leaves his squalid bedroom, let alone the house) and younger brother Maxon (a haunted, bedraggled amateur mystic, given to sitting on beds of nails and begging on the street with a wooden bowl) throws the relative sanity of Robert into stark relief. One gets the impression that if Robert had not escaped, he'd have wound up suffering just as much as Charles and Maxon, possibly even more. This isn't easy viewing and the subjects are undeniably resistable, but it does offer a unique and enlightening glimpse into the reality of the old cliché about genius and madness walking hand-in-hand. Recommended.

---

22 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
candid, 6 December 2001
Author: (steven.swenson@mdsaero.ca) from Ottawa, Canada

Crumb takes a deeply personal look at 60's counterculture artist Robert Crumb. The film focuses upon three decades of Crumb's artwork to reconstruct his unhappy childhood, days with Zap Comix in the late 60's, `dark side' period and recent life. Interviews with him, his wife Aline, family and friends reveal the motives behind his astounding creativity. Crumb is sometimes hilarious, often depressing and always entertaining – a rare combination in a documentary film.

During childhood, Crumb and his brothers Charles and Maxon found solace from their tyrannical father in comic books and drawing cartoons. Crumb escaped the mental illness that ended both his brother's careers as artists (Charles was equally as talented), but otherwise had a perfectly miserable childhood and adolescence. Socially awkward, bullied at school and rejected by women, he decided in 1962 (at age 17) to take revenge upon society `by becoming a famous artist'.

In 1966, his chemically inspired `revelations of some seamy side of America's subconscious' caught the eye of a Haight Street publisher in San Francisco and Zap Comix was born. Zap was an outlet for his creative energy, which was rooted in his social difficulties. He was uninterested in money and once turned down a $100,000 contract – a huge sum of money in those days. Although identified with the hippie crowd, he could not relate to their culture: `My main motivation [for drawing] was to get some of that free love action'.

After a few years of fame, he retired from Zap to express the darker side of his nature. His later work frequently contained sadistic and violent themes and was sometimes labeled as pornography by friends and critics alike. Even Crumb isn't sure of his intent: `Maybe I should be locked up and my pencils taken away from me'.

Critic Robert Hughes says that in Crumb's world there are no heroes and `even the victims are comic' – ideas that don't jive with traditional American culture. But Crumb has always considered himself to be an outsider and enjoys the feeling of `being very removed or extremely separated from the rest of humanity and the world in general'. `Words fail me, pictures aren't much better' to describe his disgust with American consumerism. He now lives in France because its culture is `slightly less evil than the United States'.

The film is embarrassingly candid about unhappy details of Crumb's life, such as his brothers' mental illness, experiments with drugs and ambivalent attitudes towards women. Yet it is apparent that there is no misery or violence in this man – it's all on paper. (Rating: A)

---

14 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
SOMEBODY gave me an enema....., 24 May 2001

Author: wbhickok (wbhickok@hotmail.com) from SD CA

'Crumb' is a fascinating, unsettling, but equally hilarious look at Robert Crumb. Even people who have no artistic talent or interest in the arts would be impressed with this movie. Watching how this man endured a brutal childhood and how he tried to escape it all. His candid remarks are a riot. The interview with Dian Hanson was hilarious, [does anybody have a copy of that issue]. The segments with his brothers were funny but sad at the same time. There were only two items I wish they would have included, I would have liked to seen him talk about his tax problems, and second, I wish he would have played a number with band he is in.

---

15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
An astonishing look at relativity, 27 January 1999
Author: Matthew Prins from Ames, Iowa

What makes Crumb such an intriguing documentary isn't the fact that man looked at through the camera is admirable or interesting or laudable, although one could make the argument that R. Crumb is all of those things. No, what makes Crumb such a great film is the way it shows the twisted nature of Crumb against the backdrop of his nearly psychotic family. Compared to the world, R. Crumb is a sexual deviant, a lunatic genius, and a perfect candidate to be taken away in a plain white van. Compared to his family, R. Crumb is completely and utterly normal. It's this juxtaposition that makes Crumb work over all two hours the movie needs to take its course.

---

12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Sex, drugs and piggyback rides, 4 September 2004

Author: Janne§ from Helsinki

Robert Crumb became an idol among hippies in the 1960's because of the psychedelic comics he drew at the time. In this excellent film, directed by Terry Zwigoff (who also directed the excellent, and also comic book related, "Ghost World" and "American Splendor") Crumb starts out by telling that he hates just about all the work he is most famous for. This is typical, Í think, of Crumb: he is uncompromisingly politically incorrect, completely unafraid to speak his mind openly, and above all disgusted by the idea of selling out for money.

I have been a fan of Crumb ever since I advanced beyond Donald Duck and Marvel Comics about 20 years ago (this is not to say that I don't love Donald or Marvel anymore, because I do). Crumb is probably the most talented comic book artist of the latter half of the 20t Century. Quite simply, I don't think anyone can draw as well as he does. He is not much of a storyteller, but like I pointed out above, that is more than made up by the fact that he is always totally candid about his life, sometimes painfully and embarrassingly so.

"Crumb" is an excellent portrait of an exceptionally talented artist who also happens to be a total pervert. However, as this film makes abundantly clear, Robert Crumb is practically the ideal model of a stable, well-adjusted person when compared to his mother or his brothers Charles and Maxon. We see once again that great suffering makes a great artist.

---

12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Heartbreaking and funny as hell, 28 March 2002

Author: mseditrix

What are the odds that an artist can survive family violence, mental illness, sexual rejection, and Big Mac culture? As far as this film can make clear, three members of the Crumb family had strong artistic temperaments and significant talent. Only one, Robert, made it out alive, and his life and work are defined by resistance to what should have been a sad fate.

To many, this documentary may be depressing, offensive to women, or just too damn ugly to sit through, but it made me as happy as anything I've ever seen on screen. Art's ability to reveal truth and promote survival is evident in every frame. I admire R. Crumb's courage to speak unpopular truths, to draw what gets him off, and to ferret out the art he loves at considerable expense and trouble (he's a blues maven; one of my favorite scenes, where's he's sitting on his floor absorbed by aching music, is echoed in Ghost World, when Enid takes home Seymour's record and gets lost in her favorite song). And like Ghost World, ratty, real American culture is railed at hilariously: another favorite scene involves R. on a park bench, disgustedly commenting on the ugliness of everything around him: logo-emblazoned clothes, graceless music, ugly plastic everything.

By the end of it all, I respected and liked him Crumb enormously. I'd take his scary-woman worship over the banal musings of a dime-store philosopher any day. And Terry Zwigoff deserves much praise for being able to pull it off (especially as a first-time filmmaker who had very little idea what he was doing). From high art and family pathos to a lovely animal appreciation of big round female asses, this is far more a "roller-coaster, I laughed/I cried" film than most others so touted.

---

8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Mr. Unnatural, 14 April 2006

Author: alohajoe-1 from Estes Park, Colorado

When I first saw this film at an art house in L.A. I was blown away. I had been reading Zap Comics and it's brethren since the 70s and loved them w/out really knowing why. In this great documentary I found that Robert Crumb was telling TRUE stories ins his comics. Which makes him a great story teller as well as an artist that now enjoys accolades from museums around the world. He is one of those very rare people who can be called a MASTER. He also maintains an honesty and a level of integrity that is just not seen these days, the exception being Dave Chapelle when he walked away from $50 million. It also sheds light on his dark childhood and how he turned out to be the "normal" one. Music plays a vital part in this movie as well. Crumbs passion for mostly blues music from 1936 and before and his premier collection is fascinating. He easily could be considered a music historian. I live in Colorado and will be visiting Roger Ebert today as part of his annual trek to speak about film near the CU campus and hope I can talk to him about his commentary on this updated DVD. You don't have to be a fan of Crumb's to enjoy this film either. His life story is more than enough. For me this movie led me to become the largest collector of Crumb art in the state of Colorado and enjoy an inside circle status. I can't wait for his book of Genisis to come out. This movie is NOT for children so be warned.

---

7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
sharp focus on surreal details, 17 January 2004

Author: 0rganism from Portland, Oregon

"Crumb" is a strangely enchanting enigma. The film is essentially an in-depth character study of Robert Crumb, primordial underground cartoon genius of the '60s. As I watched, I felt drawn into his world of frustrated sexuality and tormented sensitivity, pulled along pathways of familial dysfunction I didn't even know existed.

Although he is the center of the movie, Robert is hardly the only compelling character in the film. His family, his friends, his admirers, his former girlfriends, his critics, all come through in very sharp focus. This film could easily have been nothing more than an homage to R. Crumb's 'seminal' works, but instead offers nuanced interpretation from some intelligent people. Even the master himself takes a dim view of his creation at times.

Yet one comes to understand, through R. Crumb's contrasting interactions with his family, what a curious combination of inner strength and minute perception it is that makes his comic art so accessible to others. Simple yet mindblowing things, like how he approaches sketches of photographs from a 19th century sanitarium, or his sourcebook with pages of photos of suburban streetlights and electrical substations, give insight into the mechanisms of his genius.

Highly recommended, 9/10

---

7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A painfully revealing, thrilling, shocking and generally interesting documentary about the life of R. Crumb, 9 April 2006

Author: movielova1 from Australia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I first found out about R. Crumb through "Fritz The Cat" even though he was opposed to the movie (which I must say I thoroughly enjoyed!) Anyway, I decided to do a bit of research on the character and found out that a man named Robert Crumb created this spaced out little creature. For a couple of years on, I forgot about the subject. Then, last year I remembered Robert and his controversial works. I was in the city and I happened to stumble across this rather "hidden" DVD. It was entitled "Crumb". At once I stuffed my hand down my pocket and fished out my hard earned $30. And I have got to say, it is the best damn $30 I have ever spent. "Crumb" will shock you, intrigue you, provide you with facts about R. Crumbs life that you could only hear from the man himself. This movie shows how Crumb reacts to events, what he thinks of the world and what makes him tick. As far as the whole storyline goes, the movie has an excellent soundtrack to add to the whole experience.I'd have to say, if you see only one documentary this year, definitely make it "Crumb". You wont be disappointed!

---

---

Page 1 of 9:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Amazon.com summary	Ratings
Awards	Newsgroup reviews	External reviews
Official site	Plot keywords	Main details
Your user comments	Your vote history