Ghost World is the first dramatic feature by Terry Zwigoff, who previously directed the astonishing documentary Crumb. Though both films are enlivened by the weird energies of the comic book universe, Ghost World is nowhere near as interesting as Crumb. Thora Birch plays the fresh-out-of-high-school but too-cool-for-college heroine Enid, whose pretentious self-absorption is as off-putting as it may be true to life. Scarlett Johansson is her more conventional and more compelling best friend, Becky. The movie begins in an annoying key, with Enid and Becky doling out the hipper-than-thou putdowns that have been par for the course for almost every high-school movie since Heathers. As Enid and Becky begin to grow apart after graduation, their relationship gets more interesting. But this story is put on the back burner by the appearance of Steve Buscemi's Seymour, the sad sack collector of old records who is first a victim of one of Enid's cruel pranks and later her love interest. Buscemi is as good as ever, and some of his scenes are quite moving, but as the weak central link between the Enid/Becky and the Enid/Seymour story arcs, Thora Birch's Enid--with her inexhaustible anti-establishment wardrobe and wearying whine--can't carry the movie as far as it could have gone.
The most rewarding inheritance that Ghost World retains
from its source (Daniel Clowes' graphic novel of the same name)
is a vivid visual style in which the backgrounds are often richer
and more interesting than the foreground. This inversion of the
peripheral and the central extends to the movie's characters and
story generally--everything else in Ghost World works better
than its focus on Enid. Though Enid's scorn of contemporary commercial
media culture and her sensitivity to the "ghost world"
of marginalized and past voices are sympathetic, her lack of self-awareness
(however typical of teenaged "rebels") makes her difficult
to bear. By contrast, the grotesqueries and gripings of Crumb
are irresistible because Zwigoff and R. Crumb himself both clearly
acknowledge just how sick a puppy Crumb is.