Customer Reviews
AMERICAS FINEST LIVING CARTOONIST 
2008-08-27
i LIKED THE MOVIE AND FOUND IT VERY PRIVATE very personal very low budget!
A friend called it the 'worst movie he ever saw'...after all it wasnt hollywood!
Someone said that CRUMB was picked on alot and he could relate to that.
Since the movie was made Crumbs disappeared to France.
A Life in Ink and Paper 
2008-08-17
Roughly ten years or so ago I attempted to delve into the world of independent comics. Having most of my comic reading consisting of superhero titles and manga, American independent comics were quite an eye-opener for me and I soon found myself delving into the worlds of Daniel Clowes, Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes, and Adrian Tomine. One of the artists I came across was R. Crumb, a skinny, myopic man whose libido is splashed all over his comics in the forms of large breasted big butted women who often have the heads of beasts. Being that R. Crumb is considered the founding father of 1960s independent/alternative comics; I thought that Terry Zwigoff's documentary film simply titled Crumb would be the perfect place to start.
Not appearing on camera and his voice a quiet hush while interviewing Crumb and his family, Zwigoff leaves most of the film to the thoughts and ramblings of R. Crumb, a physically frail man whose love of drawing, and love of LSD, led him to fame during the 1960s with such creations as Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural. However, while the segments with Crumb, his wife, and exes are quite interesting, the most interesting parts of the two hour long documentary consist of interviews with Crumb and his older brother Charles and his younger brother Max. Along with two sisters, the trio of boys was the children of a pill popping depressed housewife and a domineering ex-marine father whose distaste for his wimpy sons often led to bouts of physical violence. Led by Charles, the Crumb children began to write, draw, and sell comics. However, unlike Robert, Charles was unable to use his talents to escape his home and became a recluse whose only joys seem to consist of taking anti-depressants and reading old novels. Max, a gifted painter, was able to escape but only to a life of poverty. These interviews with Crumb's family members give the viewer a depiction of how Crumb's traumas, neuroses, and bizarre fetishes helped him create some of the most influential comic art in the past half century.
The documentary consists of little more than interviews and shots of Crumb's work, but through these interviews the viewer learns in detail of Crumb's quite pessimistic view of capitalist America and why he rejected numerous opportunities to become very rich. Funny, depressing, and educational, Zwigoff's film makes a fine addition to the library of not only independent comic fans, but fans of fine documentary filmmaking as well.
Quite Excellent 2008-06-12
R Crumb himself is a very complex character, and the filmmaker did a fantastic job of capturing all sides of him, and the controversies of his comics.
Just for a little bit of perspective, I've never read any of his writings. All I know is what the movie told me. I'm guessing that makes me unusual, because all his fans surely rushed out to watch this.
I also think it's great.
And hey hey hey, what a dysfunctional weird family. I don't want to say more because that would fall into the "telling you what to think" category, which both the movie and its subject avoid.
I'm impressed!
A Crumb Fan Must Have 2008-03-16
If you are a Crumb fan then you have to have this DVD. If you think that you are a Crumb fan you must have this DVD. AND if you are an Art student interested in history then you must have this DVD. If you are thinking about getting this DVD, then you must buy it.
candid 2008-03-10
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.
The archetypal outsider 2008-02-24
David Lynch (Blue Velvet) presents one of the most critically acclaimed films ever made. A hilarious and mysterious journey through artistic genius and sexual obsession CRUMB is a wild ride through the mind of Robert Crumb; creator of Zap Comix Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat. CRUMB enters a territory as spooky as it is fascinating... a portrait of the artist as misanthrope as bad-boy visionaryas a joker and sex maniac and finally as hero. One of those rare film experiences that has the giddy effect of being a nightmare and a party at the same time.DVD FEATURESLanguage: EnglishSubtitles: EnglishTheatrical TrailerScene SelectionsFull Screen FormatFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: R UPC: 043396144453 Manufacturer No: 14445
Mondo Bizarro 2007-12-22
When I was a teenager growing up in San Diego, R Crumb's comic books were available in every head shop. It was a lot hipper to have a stack of Crumb's work stashed away in your room than it was to have a Playboy or a Penthouse. Crumb's work was misogynistic, sexist, racist, and about as politically incorrect in every way that it could be yet it was the toast of the counterculture.
I was visiting friends in Las Vegas when Crumb was first released and saw it while I was there. It made such an impression that I put it on my list of DVDs to own and finally got around to getting my copy this year.
Robert Crumb is nothing if not bizarre. On watching the interviews with him, some of his family members, his friends and others around him I got the feeling that his perverted talents developed because of his dysfunctional upbringing rather than despite it. The raw talent was always there, it is just a twist of fate and mind that propelled him to fame as the foremost cartoonist of his generation.
Think what you will of his subject matter, his work is undoubtedly great. Crumb taps into a vein of humor that springs from the darkest corners of his imagination and brings it to life in such a way that we can laugh while simultaneously being repelled. Nothing is taboo to Crumb, in fact he seems to revel in the most degenerate imagery. And to think that he is the most normal of the family members who were interviewed for this documentary! Incredibly, both of his brothers proved weirder than he, the one who still lived at home reminds the viewer of Goober from the Andy Griffith Show only stranger. David Lynch could hardly imagine an odder lot for one of his odder movies. (Crumb's sisters declined to be interviewed for the film, probably out of embarassment).
Since I enjoy Crumb's work, I found it interesting to discover the things that made him the kind of guy he is. His awkward relations with women undoubtedly color the way he depicts them and its funny that while some of the women interviewed are appalled, others are more philosophical. The film didn't touch on his relations with blacks although his cartoons feature black characters in the crudest caricature imaginable. That I find very ironic, because one of Crumb's lifelong obsessions has been the promotion and preservation of early black music, particularly the blues.
R Crumb is pure mondo bizarro. If you are easily offended, then this documentary is definitely not for you. However, if you are a fan of one of the greatest and most controversial illustrators of the second half of the twentieth century and would like to find out what makes him tick, you may find this film to be quite a revelation.
Crumb 2007-07-11
In this frank portrait, Zwigoff introduces us to the shy, geeky, reclusive man whose unsavory, joyfully perverse comics--often representing the artist's fetish for piggyback rides and big-legged gals--have been alternately criticized as misogynistic and hailed as demented genius. Aside from seeing Crumb at work and hearing first-hand what drives his prolific creativity (who else would admit an early sexual attraction to Bugs Bunny?), we meet the artist's unusual family members, including Charles, a talented cartoonist himself who now lives on the streets. The poignancy of his psychic condition is not lost on Crumb, who understands how close he came to the same fate. "Crumb" is an absorbing film about a truly eccentric personality.
A powerful documentary 2007-06-28
Robert Crumb has already been identified in the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a creator of the cartoon characters Fritz the Cat (that was turned in a first X-rated feature animated film which Crumb passionately hates) and Mr. Natural and for cover art for Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills. Terry Zwigoff's documentary examines a man behind his works, his tastes, hobbies, and phobias and the forces that have contributed to producing a very original and controversial art.
Director Terry Zwigoff spent six years in making the portrait of an Artist as seen by Crumb himself, his spouses, ex-girlfriends, his son Jesse, various artists and art critics, and the members of his family. Speaking of the strange and dysfunctional families, Grumb clan could definitely take a prize. Of three brothers, only Robert Crumb was able to come through his upbringing with his sanity, talent, and ability to create and to communicate still intact but at the same time, he is a man with many inner demons, sexual and psychological that he reveals and fights through his art. His two brothers, Maxon who is a confessed sex-offender and Charles who had lived all his life in his mother's house and would commit suicide one year after he gave the interviews for the film, were both gifted artists themselves but they could not leave their childhood memories of a father, an "overbearing tyrant" and "sadistic bully", and a mother who became an amphetamine addict behind them and to move on with their lives. The interviews with Charles and Maxon are devastating, shocking, and very sad. It would be interesting to listen to their two sisters but they refused to talk in front of camera for the film.
The most fascinating aspect of the film is the fact that a viewer does not have to be a comic book fan or have knowledge of the counterculture or the specific cartoon characters to appreciate and admire it. I am not a comic books expert or fan. I've heard of Crumb before but only in regards to the films that also have impressed me a lot, "Ghost World" and "American Splendor". It did not stop me from realizing that the documentary about Robert Crumb, his life, his works, his struggle, his anger, his obsession with sex, his non-conformism, non-sentimentality, his rejection to do mainstream even it means saying "No" to making a lot of money, and his ability to look at the circumstances and deal with them with a dry humor is an amazing document which provides a thought-provoking character study and the deep psychological insight in the creative mind of an artist.
Crumb: Mad magazine on steroids 2007-05-23
I saw this documentary when it was first released, and just watched it again on DVD. Twelve years of life experience have made me appreciate the film just that much more.
I've never been a Crumb fan or anything, but it's still a good story. I can recognize his cartoons for the satirical things they often are, and I think he likes women a lot more than he realizes. That he is as normal as he appears to be, given his family background, is quite remarkable. One wonders what his sisters must be like, and why they declined to participate in this movie.
