Dear Mr. Watterson

2013 documentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A documentary about the Calvin and Hobbes comic and its reclusive titular creator.

I'm a fan of the comic--but who isn't?--and appreciate the ideals of Bill Watterson. But I knew I was in trouble at the title screen. The title dear mr. watterson appears beneath a Wattersony watercolor autumnal tree followed by a "by Joel Allen Schroeder" which made me instantly suspicious. Schroeder narrates himself and seems to be finding excuses to put himself on camera. It's off-putting. There's really nothing new here. Most of this feels like a long commercial for Bill Watterson, and the accolades are poured on by fellow artists and other people to the point of redundancy. This moves through arguments, lackadaisical, that comic strips are a legitimate art form and that Calvin and Hobbes is perhaps the shining example or epitome of the medium, an exploration of Watterson's admirable anti-licensing stance that has cost him tens of millions of dollars, and a look at what makes the man's work so enduring. There's also a look at some pre-C&H artwork. But there's no Watterson. Just a lot of Joel Allen Schroeder. And I suppose Schroeder does what he can without Watterson, but I'm just not sure this achieves much of anything. Well, as a love letter to the guy, it's about as effective as it can be. It'd be the type of love letter that you'd read and think, "Why is the author talking about himself so much?" though. A better use of my hour and a half would have been to just sit down with some Calvin and Hobbes books. At least it's not quite bad enough for me to want to see Calvin urinating on the director though.