Hey folks, Harry here with the first review from AFM I've seen for GHOST WORLD... the highly anticipated (by cool people) film version of Daniel Clowe's brilliant GHOST WORLD comic book... a bible for the strange and unusual as brought to light and shadow life by Terry Zwigoff (director of the insanely wonderful CRUMB). Read and smile as this sounds EXACTLY like what I hoped the film would be. Here ya go (beware of spoilers)
Hi Harry,
I saw GHOST WORLD at AFM. As the cliched saying usually goes "I've never written to you before," but as a card carrying social misfit, GHOST WORLD certainly moved me to. Terry Zwigoff has translated the outsider sensibility of CRUMB into a masterpiece in the cinema of anguished teen films. Though I've only flipped through Daniel Clowe's underground comic from which this film is based, Zwigoff has certainly captured the barren, stressed-out look of its black and white panels (though the film is in glorious, REPO MAN-like color). Thora Birch is Enid, a near-clone of MTV's Daria. She's a fashionably nihilistic, horned-glass wearing girl who's held back from graduating high school because of a failed art class. She hangs out with her best (and more visibly acceptable) friend Rebecca (a great, hoarse-voiced Scarlet Johansen), making merciless fun of dweebs who really are no better than they are.
On a dare, the merciless Enid sets up the sad-sack jazz collector Seymour (Steve Buscemi, great as unusual in an unusually "normal" role) by phoning an chance meeting ad he's placed in the LA Weekly. In one of GHOST WORLD's many scenes of inspired, yet sympathetic nastiness, Enid and her friends chortle as Seymour waits in a restaurant booth across from them, hoping for a date who will never show up. Enid's fascination with Seymour grows beyond a mocking distance, and she soon finds a kindred spirit in this "loser."
Thora's Enid plays Henry Higgins to Buscemi's Eliza Doolittle and tries to land him a date, while doing her best to hide the fact that she's fallen for him. But while she can "control" his life, Enid can't get a handle on her own. With no real plans for any future, Enid is at a loss of whether to move in with her friend or make a move on Seymour. In her reject art class, Enid does her best to shock her new age-y teacher (a hilarious Illeana Douglas) with racist restaurant art. At home, Enid's dad (Bob Balaban at his sputtering best) is getting umcomfortably close to his girlfriend (Teri Garr, still funny as ever) . Before long, everything comes to a head for Enid in decidedly unexpected, and inspired ways.
GHOST WORLD's strength is in its honest depiction of the outsider. CRUMB showed the amount of pathos that Zwigoff could get from the hopelessly outcast, material which is dwelled on here with just as much emotional impact. Don't expect the kind of blithe stereotypes that made HIGH FIDELITY such a piece of utter bullshit when it came to depicting record collectors and their relationships- or lack thereof. This is the real thing. Particularly funny is a scene where Enid and Rebecca attend a "party" at Seymour's place, attended by vinyl fetishists who couldn't be less sociable- with the exception of Dave Ozer in a great cameo.
Birch is terrific at playing her second social misfit since AMERICAN BEAUTY. And part of GHOST WORLD's beauty is how unsympathic Enid often is. Her constant condescendion, her habit of attacking everyone around her, friend and foe is part of the point. Any "normal" teen would run the other way from a girl like this (though I certainly wouldn't). Feeling alone, all she has left to do is revel in it.
GHOST WORLD moves at a slow pace that lets all of the emotion and characters sink in. Only the ending, which doesn't quite resolve anything, seems a bit unsatisfying. But so is life for a lot of people, particularly those immersed in their own worlds. Clowe's has done an excellent, biting job of writing the screenplay, with many tart observations on why so many of "us" just can't get a life. The script is like John Hughes, only a bit smarter and nastier- what Ferris Bueller would've been if he was a born a sexually unfulfilled punker.
Hats off to GHOST WORLD, a film which I related to more than I wanted. Zwigoff and Clowes are to be congratulated on one of the best comic book adaptations ever. One which is about anything but superheroes. Just the people who wish they could fly out of their own skins.
Call me Wez.
