Rating: 
Summary: Funny, dark spoof on popular culture w/ some romance
Review: On one level, Terry Zwigoff's newest film is a tale of teenage angst and an odd romance. The film's main character, Enid, has a genuinely dark and skeptical view of humanity and popular culture. Zwigoff does a marvelous job in showing how Enid stumbles into a romance with Seymour, a nerdy, 40-something record collector, and how she reacts to that relationship. At times, I saw Enid saying and doing things for no logical reason -- very accurate for an 18-year-old. The director excels at creating a very realistic portrayal of how a teenager thinks and acts...much better than American Pie (1 or 2)! More importantly, Ghost World is a biting satire on America's cultural ignorance, savaging popular culture left and right - sappy movies, political correctness, record collectors, cliched artwork (and art teachers), and more - you gotta look for it! My favorite scene in the movie placed Enid and Seymour in a bar where an old blues legend was opening up for this cheesy, Blues Traveler-esque "blues" band that passes itself off as authentic "delta blues." The frat boys in attendance pay more attention to the sports game on the TV than the bluesman, and when the headliner takes the stage, they all break out dancing like some lounge show (leaving Seymour aghast). Yeah, the romance angle was nice, but I relished the director's sharp-witted stabs at popular culture. Pardon me for snugly smirking at ya next time in the video store, but you'll know why after you've seen this film!
Rating:
Summary: Quirky, funny, poignant
Review: I really enjoyed "Ghost World" and having been an angst ridden "outsider" in high school myself, I could relate to the alienation of the central character, Enid. The movie although peppered with prickly humor and oddball characters has a true-to-life feel that effectively resonates that universal sense of alienation that we have all experienced at one time or another just by virtue of having once been a teenager. The movie starts off as a comedy but as Enid's self destructive behavior progressively manifests itself, it ultimately achieves a real poignancy. The ending is the sort of Anti-Hollywood ending guaranteed to leave it out the running for an academy award. And that's a shame too, as the acting, directing and script were all first rate. And to all those who dismissed this as a "chick-flick", you missed out on a real comic gem and believe me, I'm no "chick".
Recommended
Rating: 
Summary: No revelations here...
Review: First, my apologies to all that found some sense of ownership in these characters or their deeds. Personally I found Enid to be despondent wreck, hell bent on lambasting others for their perceived injustices (read: success). The parade of foil characters that attempted to sharply contrast her persona only reinforced my belief that not only was she clueless and without direction, but that she was simply melnacholy because she did not fit in. Her acerbic demeanor, lack of depth or any altruistic conviction only proved that she wasn't motivated by a cause or struggle. My belief is that her perpetual effort to rub popular culture the wrong way was in some way a combative response to not fitting in. On that level this work was a mild success. Just don't get confused, acting out is not high art. This piece was a prime example of both the director and the protagonist being rebels without a cause...or clue.
Rating: 
Summary: not at all what i was hoping for
Review: after hearing all the great buzz about 'Ghost World', i decided to check it out with some friends one night. thank god we rented it, instead of buying or shelling out the cash to go see it in the theater. Steve Buscemi gives one of the best performances of his career (he's the reason for at least 2 of the stars for this movie) as an aging outcast loner. going completely against his usual type of either freaky comedic relief or freaky creep, he turns in a very emotionally engaging performance. we end up feeling for this guy and really honestly wish that his life could have ended up better. aspects of this movie were smartly hilarious. in one scene, a sunburnt idiot loitering outside of a convenience store ends up in a physical fight with the store's owner: his inexpertly swung nunchucks against the exasperated shopkeeper's ratty old mop. while the first half of the movie got the occasional laugh, the rest sort of just melted and went nowhere. the plot fizzles out by then end, leaving the viewer completely unsatisfied with the conclusion. the near-pedophilia relationship between the aging Buscemi and the high-schooler Thora Birch was also rather unsettling. overall, the movie is kind of slow and shallow, and takes itself way too seriously.
Rating:
Summary: [Silly] Chick Flick
Review: Being an architect/artist I expected this movie to be different from the hollywood mainstream. Well it was different, but it was STILL A CHICK FLICK! No I didn't expect this movie to be an action adventure, but I thought it might some nice camera angles thrown in along with some strange characters. The characters were [silly] and I found them to be very uninteresting. The plot was very slow paced and nothing really happens that is different than everyday normal life. I mean, come on! Does Hollywood think that we are such ... that we would be interested in watching a movie about an outcast's very boring life?!? The reason I think this movie is a chick flick is that there is nothing appealing for the typical male. No action, nothing visual really to look at, no sex, no adventure, no witty lines, there wasn't really any positive male role models (all the guys were complete wimps, outcasts, and mental cases). It was almost as if this movie was male bashing throughout. It's advertised as the struggles of two females after high school graduation. Well one character is someone normal and the other is supposed to be strange and interesting. The movie focuses on the strange character, only she's not that strange and is uninteresting for the most part. You can go to the typical high school and find more interesting characters there. About a 1/4 way into the movie the normal character seems to disappear for the rest of the movie. Needless to say that she was the cute one and the only one that would appeal to the typical male. The main reason I bought this movie was because Steve Buscemi was in it. He usually plays the quirky fringe character that is amusing. Even his role in this was disappointing. I figured if Steve B. was in it then it would have some quirky characters. Not even. So as it is I give it (2) stars and that is just because it wasn't awful every single minute. I rate a movie (1) star if they are awful the whole way through with not one scene worthy of watching. As a Chick Flick it might be a (3) star movie. It did focus totally on human interaction and relationships, the problem is that it's just not interesting enough. Maybe it will appeal to someone who doesn't live in a city and they will think these characters are different and interesting. ... I would not recommend this movie to anyone at all. If you are a guy and your girlfriend/wife/relative wants to watch this movie then be sure to have a book or magazine to read otherwise you will get in a fight because you will be complaining so much.
Rating: 
Summary: a new take on teen angst
Review: Enid and Rebecca are new high school grads who have decided that the torment of others is their life's purpose. They begin by answering an "I Saw You .." ad in the local paper so that Seymour, the guy who places the ad, gets stood up while they watch. However, they grow to like him and adopt him as a friend. Meanwhile, the friends grow in different directions -- Enid still has to complete an art class in order to get her high school diploma while Rebecca gets a job at a place that looks a lot like Starbucks in order to finance the apartment that she and Enid always said they would get together. But Enid might not want that plan anymore... This is a great independent film with the stand-out talents of Thora Birch, Scarlett Johannsen and the always-entertaining wondrous Steve Buscemi.
Rating:
Summary: The Road Less Travelled.......
Review: If you ever felt like giving the finger to the Pep Rally crowd, you should be able to relate to Enid & Rebecca, two misfit teenagers armed with intelligence, caustic wit, and reverse snobbery to shield their real sensitivity and vulnerability. A world unto themselves, they are aloof, cool & cynical, floating detached through the Ghost World of inanity & conformity they percieve around them, with youthful world-weary shrugs, rolling eyes, biting comments and sometimes cruel jokes. When Enid (Thora Birch), the more cynical (and ultimately more vulnerable), of the two, decides to play a cruel joke on the writer of a Personals Ad selected at random, she eventually meets and gets to know Seymour (Steve Buscemi), and learns that there is more to him than her first superficial assessment allowed. Their growing relationship and the resultant distancing of her friend Rebecca (Scarlet Johannsen) leads Enid to discover something about herself and other people, and the ultimately shallow satisfactions of unrelenting cynicism. Rebecca will adapt and conform much easier than Enid ever will. Enid is a true maverick and outsider, an artist in the making, she will find she will have to take the "road less travelled" and that it will make all the difference. Nicely done by the actors and director Zwigoff (on the heels of his excellent documentary, Crumb).
Rating: 
Summary: stink -o- ramma
Review: OK, Scarlett Johansson is very sexy in this movie, and the 80's guy (complete with mullet hair) got a snicker out of me, but most of all this movie is missing a plot. The main characters drone on in their meaninless lives cursing a lot. After watching, you aren't uplifted in any way or even challenged to think about anything, you are just depressed. It is a very slow moving and maybe I just don't get the 'art' of it. I just think it was boring.
Rating:
Summary: Every Cynic is a Frustrated Romantic
Review: "Ghost World" was the best movie I've seen in a LONG damn time. The key to a great movie is that it's its own world --
a self-contained universe. "Bringing Up Baby" is one such example, so is "Vertigo" and "For a Few Dollars More." Any of Billy Wilder's movies, too. This one was one of them. I love Enid. A teenage H.L. Mencken, she skewers pretentious poseurs and tips over sacred cows. But, underneath her outer punk persona, there is a soft-hearted hero-worshipper. Her predicament is that she's stranded on a social desert island and uses cynicism as a shield to protect her from the hopeless banality in which heroes and passion are deemed passe by people who walk through life questioning nothing, but just parroting the answers they've picked up from the larger society. "Ghost World" abounds in social commentary, but doesn't fall into the schmaltzy trap of trying to "solve" the world's social ills. Although on the surface Enid is directionless, she nonetheless has a mania for sketching a diary of the oddballs and weirdos that make up her small town. An excellent artist and charicaturist, Enid ends up failing art class TWICE. Her airheaded hippy/burnout art teacher, Roberta (Illeana Douglas), is a walking cliche of a total conformist affecting an air of anti-authoritarianism. She blows off Enid's diary and her cartoons of Don Knotts, but pushes her students to instead produce so-called "controversial" art. A really dead-on scene is when one of Roberta's sycophantic students creates a sculpture out of coathangers, which represents "a woman's right to choose, something I feel super-strongly about." It's a gem of a parody on political art in which the politics are much stronger than the art. I was rolling on the floor when Roberta's real bad college art film "Mirror/Father/Mirror" clip was playing. God damn, that rings true. Roberta doesn't encourage the artistic impulse so much as pushing her agenda on the students to be "controversial" and "confront people's attitudes." So, Enid decides to spoof Roberta and bring in a "found object" of a Jim Crow charicature from the 1920s of "Coon's Chicken," which depicts a monkey-like negro. This pisses off the other students (who were sotto voce receiving the message that they should only confront people with PC controversy), but the irony of the movie is in how Roberta reacts to the Jim Crow poster; Enid can't get the time of day from her when it comes to her own talented artwork, but her jokes on Roberta's inanities wins Roberta over to her cause and even inspires Roberta to get Enid a scholarship to art college. All this falls apart when Roberta enters the piece in an exhibit, and the local censors force her to remove the poster and fail Enid in her class. Her capitulation reveals her devotion to "controversy" and "confrontation" to be a hollow pose, and she covers her [rear] by letting Enid be the lamb to the slaughter. The relationship between Enid and Seymour (Steve Buscemi) evinces Enid's yearnings to find someone to look up to, rather than down upon. I liked Steve Buscemi a lot. I'm so used to him playing funny roles, that it was sort of incongruous seeing him play it (mostly) straight in a comedic movie, but it worked quite well. Like Enid, Seymour is a middle-aged outcast, and at first becomes the victim to one of Enid's and her best friend Rebecca's (Scarlett Johansson) cruel pranks. But underneath the nerdish and pitiful exterior, Enid comes to discover in Seymour someone as isolated and alientated from society as she is. She finds in him a noble soul, whose passions are worn less on his sleeve than Enid's are, but locked up in his 1920s-themed room dedicated to his 78 rpm blues and ragtime records and poster art from the same era. Enid sees in Seymour a lot of herself, but also someone who has been run over once too many times in life and whose social rebellions have shrivelled into repressed loneliness. Enid finds in Seymour a hero, and gushes "I'd kill for a room like this" when complimenting his passion for nostalgia. To which Seymour -- who has given up on the possibility of ever fitting in or finding love -- replies "go ahead, kill me." By the movie's end, Seymour starts asserting his inwardly pent-up feelings to relate to the world through his romance with Enid. Finally getting up the nerve to break up with Dana, a nice, though conventionally-thinking person, in order to be with Enid, who shares his passions, and thinks like he does, Seymour nonetheless has his love for Enid somewhat unrequited. Just as the revelation that Seymour deserves happiness manifests itself, Enid alientates herself from the world -- and the two people she most treasured in the world, Seymour and Rebecca. A happy ending does not win the day, because Enid is compelled to travel down the same lonely path that Seymour has. Perhaps in twenty years, she will have become what he is now. As I recall, this movie was nomimated for absolutely NOTHING by the Academy of Motion Pictures "Arts and Sciences." And yet, this was the best movie in a year barren of talent, originality and true cinematic art. Now I understand why this movie is called "Ghost World."
Rating:
Summary: Comics VS Movies
Review: I have to say I had high hopes for Ghost World after many successful comic/graphic novel adaptation, but ended up hurt and disappointed. Don't get me wrong, they picked great actors/actresses, but the story line in the movie seemed to drag. I think the book reads faster than the pace of the movie. But I'm just a digruntled comic-geek!! Check this movie out if you're really bored and are waiting for the Spiderman movie to come out!!
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