Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti and himself) is a Cleveland native, hospital file clerk, and hilariously grumpy observer of life's strange and unpredictable pageant.

A comic book writer who writes about his everyday life as an omnivorous reader, jazz lover, obsessive-compulsive collector, and lousy housekeeper.

A prickly poet of the mundane who knows that all the strategising in the world can't save a guy from choosing the wrong supermarket checkout line.

A regular Joe who pursues self-expression without self-censorship and finds a grateful audience, critical admiration, and that most remarkable of happy endings, a loving family.

For those of us who yearn to be known for who we really are before we die through artistic expression or otherwise American Splendor will move you.

Pekar is portrayed, by both Giamatti and himself, in an entertaining and ultimately truth-enhancing combination of real-life and dramatic storytelling. He comes across as a man consumed by existential angst. His saving grace is self-reflection.

Pekar, a lover of classic records and comic books, figured out that for him the best way to express his angst (and thereby relieve himself of it) was by telling his own everyday life stories in comic books. So what if he couldn't draw?

He asks his good friend Robert Crumb (James Urbaniak, in a scene played with sweet vulnerability by Giamatti, to draw his stories for him.

So what if Pekar's stories portray an existence as grey as Cleveland in November? Even if he never got rich, he got to express himself. And it was through his work that life's little graces came his way, such as Joyce Brabner, his wife and collaborator, and, later, the daughter they adopt.

The message: life has a way of working out if you remain true to yourself a message that rings all the more satisfyingly given that it comes from a real-life story.

In the climactic scene where Pekar is literally rolling on the floor of his apartment, feeling the brutal pain of his cancer treatments in the lonely solitude of night, we get to see him look into the bottomless pit of anxiety and ask, "if I die does my character, the guy in my comics, die with me or does he go on?".

Fortunately, Brabner wakes up and gives him a flesh-and-blood place to rest his fears. It's a short scene and Brabner, of course, doesn't have a direct answer for Pekar.

The film is filled with plenty of funny and heartwarming details and characters, more than enough to soften Pekar's view of the world.

By Dan Cooke