Ghost World

Review by By Clint Morris

With pace as up and down as an out of control elevator, Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World is eccentric as a Glover reunion, but nonetheless a welcome excuse for ink spillage. But while the movie is an interesting excursion, it's not the type of place you'd want to spend too much time...

Based on the comic books of the same name, Ghost World is a perceptive translation to film with well-carved characters and some of the more hilarious moments on film to date. But unlike the comic book's it's based upon, you can't close the cover when you've had enough.

Enid, a Louise-Brookish kitten for curiosity, and her best friend, the more unadventurously puffed-up Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), wander through the suburban gnash and plastic, a vérité adventure world of weirdoes and eccentrics crossing paths with nearly all of them at almost stalker level.

When Enid and Rebecca spot a personal ad in the newspaper from a man wishing to meet a woman he once had a brief moment with - the girls decide to make trouble and give the guy a call. But upon seeing his sad face as he leaves the rendezvous point, Enid starts to feel sorry and almost connected to the man.

Zigoff fleshes out the character of Seymour (Steve Buscemi), a miserably clad gloomy discharge who collects vintage blues, jazz, and ragtime 78s and can relate to nothing in the corporately homogenized media age - including those people who take their cues from it. He and Enid are drawn together as outsiders, and inevitably form a closer relationship than the one Enid and Rebecca have had over the past loop.

If you've ever felt imprisoned by life and yearned to break free of the token clichés we're expected to be or become, Ghost World could be right up your alley. It's diminutively witty, minutely emotive and to some extent amusing.

The first half of the film is the funniest, where we cross paths with some of the wackiest characters to date. The descending second half starts to drown in unevenness and melodrama. Still, with great performances by a suitable Birch, a coy Johansson and an always superb Steve Buscemi, Ghost World is a cockishly entertaining, if only initially novel movie.

3 out of 5

Ghost World
Australian release: Thursday June 27th
Cast: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Teri Garr, Illeana Douglas, Brad Renfro, Bob Balaban, Stacey Travis.
Director: Terry Zwigoff.
Website: Click here

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