Ghost World (2001)

It’s the end high school, life is pregnant with new adventures and the whole world is your hoister; what do you do first? Go travelling around the world? Go to college to study for your dream career? Get a job and save up for that new winter coat you wanted so bad? Or just sit around random bars and coffee shops and pock fun at everything and everybody, who has the unfortunate displeasure of stepping in your path. “You just hate every guy on the face of the earth”, “That’s not true; I just hate all these extraverted, pseudo bohemian losers”. In that one quote alone you can almost summarise all that is Enid Coleslaw, one head of the two head pseudo intellectual, cynical, misfit heroines of Ghost World. Enid Coleslaw is a walking talking cliché, who the more we get to know her the more realize that she is the very thing she hates them most, and is the epitome of what the quote says, except swap bohemian for punk wannabe and you have her down to a tee. Then you have Rebecca Dopplemeyer played by Scarlett Johansson, who also indulges in mocking all of the mere mortals in the unnamed town, but unlike Enid she has possess a lot more maturity and a better grasp who she truly is, as well as the attention from most of the guys, which is a fact Enid secretly can’t stomach and most always step in to crush any possibility from love ever blossoming – what are friends for right?. The two together act as the villains of the film, slowly but surely making everyone’s life as misery, even sweet old Seymour (who has a strong resemblance to Gollum from LOTR) who is the hero of this little story, which is pretty big fete seeing that Steven Buscemi who played a crazed lunatic serial killer in Con Air could be made to look like a good guy, just shows who you’re dealing with in concerns to these terrible twosome. Even their first meeting was purely down to one of their mean pranks, as they coax Seymour into a 1950’s inspired dinner that - plays nothing but hip hop, claiming to be the women he was searching for in the lonely hearts sections of a newspaper, only for him to turn up and find her not there – poor Seymour. But Enid doesn’t count on soon becoming obsessed ( maybe even falling in love) with this weird little man and his weird little world; swamped in old vinyl’s, useless junk and old pictures of racist fast food mascots he can’t get rid off – which I’m pretty sure makes Seymour a hoarder. Whilst at the mean time the rest of Enid’s life seems to be crumbling around her, and even the special friendship she shared with Rebecca isn’t safe, as it slowly begins to disintegrate as their lives move in entirely different directions. But this the sort of rich characterization that makes Daniel Clowes script such a walking paradox, mixing cult humour with mainstream charm, which appears as a even more impressive of fete when you realize that the film was based on Daniels originally created underground comic book sensation, under the same name, then with the help of director/ co writer Terry Zwigoff, knowb best for Bad Santa, they were then able to adapt the work into a commercially and critically successful piece of cinema, that effortlessly stands out by itself as a masterpiece on its own merits, completely separate from its comic book source. I loved the film so much, probably one of my favourite cult comedies; up there with the likes of Wayne’s World, Big Lebwoski and Clerks. My favourite aspect were the two main characters, who made it almost difficult to hate them for two long, because as much as it may seem too easy and warranted dislike both Enid and Rebecca, but the more you dive deeper inside the minds of both girls, the more you find them endearing and lovable, because at the end of the day they are just too young girls trying to find out who they are and where they fit in this big wide world – aren’t we all deep really? But as good as Scarlett Johansson (also known for Lost In Translation and Her) was at playing Rebecca when considering especially that at the time of shooting she was only 16; which I find very difficult to wrap my head around, because she played the role with so much maturity meaning that not once did she over act in any of her scenes, thus making her performance seem every time to appear so natural and thus that little bit more believable. At the end of the day I still preferred Thora Birch as Enid, because I feel Thora despite playing a similar type of cynical character as she did so well in American Beauty, in Ghost World you can really tell that she had developed well and greatly improved as an actress; bring a fresh new perspective and exuberance to her acting arsenal. If you are a fan of larger than life characters, a gripping coming of age tale and laughs galore; then sitting on your sofa on a Friday night, with Ghost World playing on your TV, would quiet possibly the single greatest achievement of your life. A must see all cool kids and misfits alike.