Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Steineded How sad is this?

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

MartinHafer "Ghost World" is not a film for everyone. Its characters are certainly unusual but not necessarily crowd-pleasers. It also features a vague ending...something which most film viewers would not appreciate.Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) just graduated from high school. However, they are far from the typical 17-18 year-olds. In many ways, they are like hipster versions of Daria (from the wonderful cartoon series)...but with a darker, nastier edge to them. They don't fit in with those around them and seem to enjoy giggling among themselves about how stupid and ridiculous everyone else is. However, through the course of the film, these two sullen young ladies who try very hard not to care find themselves caring. Rebecca finds a job and Enid invests her energy in a social outcast, Seymour (Steve Buscemi). All the while, their own relationship with each other becomes strained...mostly because their lives now are taking different directions. This film features some truly terrific acting. While Scarlett Johansson went on to great fame, the real stand out in this one is Thora Birch...who since has had a respectable but much more low profile career in pictures. The script also is very nice, with some interesting characters. I particularly thought the art teacher (Illeana Douglass) was fascinating...mostly because she was so very, very monumentally flawed as a human being. But it also suffers a bit because it's so very hard to care about these young ladies...at least until much later in the film. It would be easy to dislike them and just turn off the picture...which would be a mistake. A challenging and odd film...but worth seeing if you are patient and are looking for something different.

TonyMontana96 (Originally reviewed: 09/03/2017) While some of the dialogue didn't land with me early on, by the end I was amazed at how well made this picture is, and at the same time utterly engaging. The picture focuses well on its characters, and the actors go out there and shine; Thora Birch plays Enid a sarcastic but interesting young lady and she helps Seymour played brilliantly by Steve Buscemi with his romantic life as the film progresses after realising her practical joke on him was not funny and leaves her feeling bad about it; this leads her to continuously hang out with him and help him get a woman that he will hope to have a lasting relationship with; but she must also balance her relationship with her best friend Rebecca, played very well by the talented Scarlett Johansson; and this is merely one plot point in an all-round complex character comedy-drama that knows exactly how to be both original and well made.Terry Zwigoff directed the picture, rather well might I add and also helped write the screenplay which is refreshing and almost always compelling, kudos to Daniel Crowes who co-wrote it as well, these two have done a competent job in creating something memorable along with the cast of course. The cinematography and look of the picture are also fascinating as well as the supporting cast which includes Steve Buscemi, Bob Balaban (Enid's father), Brad Renfro (Josh), Ileana Douglas (Roberta) and that crazy hillbilly who kept appearing at the shop, thinking being shirtless and blasting off rock music extremely loud whilst practicing nunchaku's was a normal American thing; this character was very amusing. The comic writing for the most part is welcome, fresh and quite funny, along with some smart dialogue and an originally well-crafted ending that is memorable in its own way. Overall Ghost World is a near perfect picture made with originality and precision, it's a film that makes you feel something for the character's and care about them; it's well acted, impressive and a remarkable film.

Laura Seabrook I just watched Ghost World again, after a gap of about 5 years. This time around I'd just read the complete Ghost World which collected all the strips, and also had additional stuff including the original script of the film. And I found it a very difficult film to watch.The pacing seemed extremely slow and with it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion (especially the version I watched which was 137 minutes over the theatrical release of 111 minutes). Rebecca gets demoted to a supporting character (and seems very dull) and Seymour, I think perhaps Seymour (who was barely in the comic) should have been a main character, but in a different film. Of course the comic was episodic in nature rather than a continuous story, so they did well to adapt this at all. Perhaps though that's why Josh was demoted to a minor character and Seymour replaces him and Rebecca in many scenes.The film (much more than the comics) is about that period between being a teenager and becoming an adult. It's funny thinking about where the two main actors after the film. Scarlett Johansson's (Rebecca) career took off after this with over 30 films to her credit (think Black Widow) but Thora Birch (Enid) has only done 12 films since. Steve Buscemi (Seymour) being a character actor has done 50+ films. Not that the number of films counts for everything, but to me it shows an interesting balance and a period of transition for them, much like the characters in the film.

Robert J. Maxwell It's a spiritual quest masquerading as a romantic drama masquerading as a teen comedy about two girl just out of high school.The girls are Scarlett Johansson with stunning features, a voice that occasionally croaks, and a mammoth bosom; and Thora Birch, a pudgy Jewish girl with glasses that define her as a loser. The two friends wander about the boulevards and empty residential areas of Los Angeles, making vulgar wisecracks to the weirdos they run into. There is, for instance, an old man sitting at a bus stop, waiting for a bus whose route was canceled years ago. "That's what you think," he replies.The girls are very close, as only two people who hate everyone around them can be close. But their interests diverge when they run into a weirdo whose weirdness awakes a dormant thirst for something beautiful and entirely different in Birch, but not in Johansson, who prefers disgust.The catalyst is Steve Buscemi. The girls play a rather nasty prank on him. He's a pathetic loner with an eccentric obsession -- traditional jazz records. He sells them on Saturdays in a kid of front-yard souk. The girls twit him, asking if he has any Hindi rock music. Birch prefers heavy metal but she buys an old record from him anyway, out of curiosity, and finds herself moved by an old blues song.We see less of Johansson and her bosom as the movie follows Birch's blossoming attraction to Buscemi, who lives in a room that resembles a museum of hundred-year-old vernacular art. If self esteem could be measured, Buscemi's would register in the negative range. As Birch's home life become less tolerable, she plans to move in with Buscemi but changes her mind. Buscemi, almost against his will, takes up with a woman his own age, Stacy Travis, who is enough to disentangle any man from his affair with a portly teen ager.I don't think I'll describe the ending. Well, maybe I will. That old man sitting at the bus stop, waiting for the bus that will never come? It comes. And he gets on it and goes. Having lost everything, Thora Birch watches another bus come. She gets on it and goes.I'm sure the arrival and departure of the bus was symbolic but I don't know of what. After bouncing like a pinball between life at home, the dissolution of a warm friendship, and her affair with Buscemi, she hasn't really found anything. Rather, she's lost it. She hasn't developed a taste for blues. There really isn't anything left but disappointment and despair.All the performances are fine. No one is better than anyone else, although Bob Balaban, as Birch's indulgent father, has the best comic lines. The story is full of color and repulsion. I wish the writer, Daniel Clowes, had imagined a less allegorical end to it because that final scene just doesn't fit.At any rate, this is several steps above the expected trash about teens, sex, love, ambition, etc. I mean, it isn't, say, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."