Mr-Fusion There are guys who have been drawing comic strips for twenty, thirty years, and here's Bill Watterson with his decade-run on Calvin and Hobbes, redefining the artform before walking off the stage. It was essentially a mic drop and then a fade into obscurity. You can probably tell how deeply my love runs for his work, and I'll try not to belabor that point. But this movie is only so happy to do just that, pulling artists from all levels of comic strip fame to pay respect to that legacy that the reclusive Watterson left in his wake. It's more than just communal appreciation and rightly points out just what he did to raise the bar and preserve the strip's integrity. And that word is the name of the game; because while Calvin and Hobbes continues to attract and influence, it's also left to stand on its own. This is a quality documentary, and it evokes genuine emotions. It's as much a love letter as it is an artistic statement.7/10

donaldricco I love, love, love the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes! This movie, I just liked. It's much too long for the little "new" material/information it provides. However, I really liked the computer graphics that are in it, and it revived the love of C&H in my cellular structure! So much so, that after this, I'm gathering up all of my book collections, and reading them with my 9 year old girl! :-) Then, I'm off to go play an inning? round? quarter?, of Calvin Ball!! "... let's go exploring!"

GenevaDuck There is a great documentary waiting to be made about 'Calvin & Hobbes', but this isn't it. If this slow moving poorly paced film is supposed to be a love letter to Bill Watterson, I have a new appreciation of why he is such a recluse.On the plus side, this film has interviews with several current cartoonists who discuss the legacy of 'Calvin & Hobbes' and the effects it had on the comic industry. However, they all seem to be saying the exact same thing with no one, except Berkley Breathed, having ever had any actual contact or communication with Watterson.The film does touch on the topic of merchandising and the effect, both positive and negative, that it can have focusing on Bill Watterson not allowing C&H merchandising to occur. This subject could be a documentary all its own.

Steve Pulaski I discovered the Calvin and Hobbes comics around fourth grade, and by fifth grade, I owned every compilation book of the classic strip you could buy. I used to lug them to school, one of two at a time, and anxiously await silent reading time. While the other kids were perusing the often dull, airless endeavors that was children's fiction, I felt superior turning the bright, colorful pages of Calvin and Hobbes. One of the many reasons the strip registered with me was that each page housed an adventure you, yourself, felt like you were embarking on. I credit it and Jeff Smith's graphic novel Bone for getting me through elementary school. Joel Allen Schroeder's Dear Mr. Watterson is an adventure all its own. A love-letter, a token of appreciation, a showcase, and a necessary film for the iconic comic strip that has gone on to live in a life confined to the pages of a book and old newspaper rather than all thinkable merchandize on cluttered store shelves. From the beginning of the film, it is recognized that Calvin and Hobbes is significant for many reasons but one is that writer and illustrator Bill Watterson has refused to license the material for fear of cheapening the name and the image.This is an unheard of move where in the same world we have enough Garfield and Peanuts products to make your head spin. Look at those two popular strips and compare them to Calvin and Hobbes. The only difference is that the aforementioned comic strips have gone on to take other forms of life, from t-shirts, to toys, to advertising figures for different products, while the latter has stayed true to itself since the beginning. You've never seen it on anything besides book/newspaper pages and that's how it will hopefully stay.For those unaware (there are some but very, very few, I presume), Calvin and Hobbes was a comic strip that ran for several years about an imaginative young boy named Calvin and his stuffed tiger named Hobbes and all the adventures they'd go on as a duo. They were inseparable, mainly because the comic portrayed Calvin as an odd young boy who was just going to be odd and not care what anyone thought about him. Hobbes, his loyal companion through it all, seemed to be the only one who "got" Calvin, and as a young boy, that's the best thing you could ask for.Schroeder has an adventure of his own in this film. He travels to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the hometown of the strip's creator Bill Watterson, to try and develop and understanding of the man's motivations for creating the comic. We see Chagrin Falls of a place that time hasn't seemed to affect, as the town's appearance, architecture, and development looks as if it has remained unchanged since its inception. Schroeder evens finds himself as the library, paging through the enormous collections of newspapers dating back to 1977, where Bill Watterson's earliest illustrations can be found.The first half devotes itself to reminding us of the beauty and simplicity of the comic strip, while the second half tells us about Watterson's reclusiveness, the idea of licensing a product's name, and the future of comics as we know them. One of the best pieces of insight comes from a man named Stephen Pastis, who states that licensing effectively cheapens material that had the impact to utilize licensing in the first place. He explains how it's as if you become really close to a cousin and then, after years of a bond, he says something like, "oh yeah, I sell life insurance" (referencing MetLife's advertising campaign that utilized the Peanuts character). He continues by theorizing that Watterson's refusal to license stems from the idea of keeping control of one's original product. Film is a collaborative effort, as is an album, a book, and many other forms of media. A comic strip is your own personal thoughts, ideas, stories, and images captured on a piece of paper, and as soon as you give that simplicity up to cheap knick-knacks you lose all forms of control with the product and what's left is a once-respected product now overblown. Watterson's bold decision of not licensing the strip, without a doubt costing him millions of dollars in revenue, is definitely one of the reasons of the strip's long term success in an age where comics are overlooked and undervalued.Schroeder shows us a typical Sunday paper, where the comics are a challenge to find, usually tampered or edited for space, printed and color-aligned poorly, and, above all, uninspired. The spacial limitations and poor treatment of comics in Sunday newspapers today holds back and greatly limits potential Bill Watterson's of the digital age, and nobody seems to really care.The fact that Watterson has made the admirable decision of sacrificing temporary profits for lasting artistic purity and maintained a reclusive figure for much of his life is unfathomable in the world we inhabit today. However, take a look at what he inspired. The Calvin and Hobbes comic speaks for itself in an unconventional way, utilizing the characters, events, and situations in life children can relate to and an imaginative quality that doesn't disintegrate when one becomes older. Dear Mr. Watterson beautifully shows the impact and legacy the strip has come to behold, and articulates wholesomeness and innocence the beautiful way the strip itself did.Directed by: Joel Allen Schroeder.