Ghost World
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Writer: Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwigoff
Based on: Daniel Clowes‘ comic
Cast: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas, Bob Balaban, Pat Healy, David Cross
Seen on: 2.3.2025

Plot:
Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are teens, best friends and eternally disappointed slash annoyed with the world around them. For them, nobody is as deep as they are, and they can’t wait to finish high school and finally move in together. When a prank where they answer a personal ad in the newspaper and set up a date leads them to meet the much older and pretty weird Seymour (Steve Buscemi), Enid becomes increasingly more fascinated by him.

Ghost World, unfortunately, didn’t work for me. While I can recognize the craft involved, particularly with the cast, I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, and was annoyed more often than not.

Ghost World is often about loneliness. The characters here, especially Enid and Seymour are lonely, they are weird, they don’t fit. It’s a feeling that I certainly remember from my own teenage years, and it was probably just as true for me as it was for them. It wasn’t just a feeling, it was a fact.

The thing is, for me that was never a reason to become bitter. Maybe I just never was hungry enough, I always had people I fit with, even if I didn’t fit overall. But the feeling of superiority that Enid and Rebecca shroud themselves in and that leads them to a lot of cruelty made them so unlikeable to me that I just didn’t care for their story anymore. I couldn’t laugh with or at them, I choked on the way they treated others. I understand it was a protective measure on their side. I hated it nonetheless.

And Seymour wasn’t that much more relatable either, nor was he all that interesting. And not because he is a giant nerd, I like nerds. Just because I felt that we have already seen so many movies about men like him and I don’t see where this film added anything to this movie trope. I don’t necessarily need to like all the characters I watch movies about, but I would like care. And for care, I just need something more than cynicism – and the film never reached that for me, even if there are some attempts at the end.

It is at its best whenever Illeana Douglas makes an appearance as a genuinely funny, a little kooky art teacher who feels like she comes from a different planet just because she actually gives a shit about her students and the people around her. The film mostly laughs at her, of course. Yet another way that it ultimately frustrated me.

Summarizing: no, thank you.