Movie Review: Ghost World

Enid and Rebecca, the two best friends of "Ghost World," are a couple of acid-tongued outsiders in a gray modern world of strip malls, chain stores and dehydrated culture. They're too smart for their own good and definitely too cheeky to slide through life like their chirpier, smilier high-school classmates.

Based on the characters in David Clowes' underground comic book, and brought to life by actresses Thora Birch (Enid) and Scarlett Johansson (Rebecca), they're a couple of teen-agers who just don't belong in the typical modern American teen movie. They're not toned, slim, shiny-pretty and bouncy enough for hunk-and-bimbo gross-out comedies like "American Pie." They're too drab-looking and verbally hip for a psychopathic pseudo-case study like "Bully." And, in the more ostentatiously sensitive studies of teen angst (all those earnest descendants of "Ordinary People"), they'd be glum bad-mouth presences.

In "Ghost World," though, they're just right. As directed by prize-winning documentarian Terry Zwigoff ("Crumb"), they're realist creations hovering on caricature. Enid is the artistic, smart-mouth malcontent making small rebellions in a small world; Rebecca is the brighter, prettier, more conventional girl who's going to adjust to the real world and make all the compromises that she and Enid now mock. Indeed, as pretty Rebecca fits herself into a new game, as counter girl at a Starbucks-style coffee boutique, Enid moves farther out into radical expression in her local art class under the tutelage of teacher Roberta (Illeana Douglas), into a gradual estrangement from her bland dad (Bob Balaban), and into a bizarre relationship with fortysomething loser Seymour (perfectly played by Steve Buscemi), a failed romantic and avid collector of old blues and jazz records whom she discovers through a lonely-hearts column.

Everything Enid does is governed by her dyspeptic wisecracks about the emptiness of her surroundings: Nowhere Suburbia, California, U.S.A. Her attraction to Seymour whom she initially picks out as a stooge to be spied on and tormented is based on their mutual disaffection: on the fact that he's such a passionate collector and also such a helpless schnook. She sets up a relationship doomed to fail, based on picking out dates for him and giving him pep talks. Then, when a date works out with Dana (Stacey Travis), a lithe, blond real estate agent and the woman he was initially trying to find in the personals she's crushed.

Enid and Rebecca were born to be disappointed, and if Clowes calls their story "Ghost World," it's because he thinks their world is lifeless and that, in some ways, they are lifeless, too. The comic the movie is based on, done in black-and-white line drawings with relentlessly hip dialogue, reeks of enervation and discontent. So does the movie, though under its hip surface, covertly, it's more romantic and sweet.

Enid and Rebecca ring true. Their attitudes seem real; so do their dilemmas. Zwigoff loves this kind of outwardly colorless, inwardly seething milieu: this dead, sunny California outland with featureless stores and dreary houses. And because Zwigoff also has a true documentarian's eye for the surprising detail and the telling glimpse, much of "Ghost World" feels like something that's just happening, with or without a camera on hand. Even though it's an obviously stylized, stripped-down work, a mix of surreal images and a curious lack of overt emotion, we sense our own world behind it.

Enid and Rebecca hate phonies Enid more than Rebecca and so does the movie, which is 180 degrees away from almost any teen comedy of recent years, including the superficially similar "Welcome to the Dollhouse." It's also one of the most highly praised American movies so far this year. And though, in a way, the praise is earned this is an intelligent film full of memorable moments the movie is getting points in part because it's so different from all the big, crass studio teen comedies, because it stands so resolutely by its alienated characters.

How you react to "Ghost World" will depend on how funny you find it. For me, the movie was almost too sad to be funny, and too remote to be really sad. But while I wasn't much affected by the film as I watched it, most of it stayed with me afterward usually the sign of a very good film that somehow misses your radar.

What I did like unreservedly was the acting. Enid, as enacted by the sometimes astonishing Birch, is one of the more convincing, no-nonsense teens in recent movies more convincing, in fact than she was as Kevin Spacey's daughter in "American Beauty." Her baby-fat looks and cutting, slightly nervous delivery breathe with discontent and stifled yearning.

You could not ask for a better Seymour than Buscemi, who understands this nerdy recluse from the ground up. Buscemi is also amusingly linked in the drawings in Enid's sketch books with Don Knotts, a brilliant echo. (Enid's drawings were all executed by R. Crumb's cartoonist daughter Sophie, and Clowes himself did most of the other artwork, including the credits.) As Roberta, Enid's art teacher, Illeana Douglas flawlessly radiates all the arrogant sincerity and aggressive self-importance of a modern politically correct would-be mentor. These three performances are worth the ticket price. Many of the others Johansson, Balaban, Brad Renfro (as the girls' date-bait friend Josh), Brian George and David Sheridan are quite strong as well.

"Ghost World" also has a nice look, vaguely surreal but hard-edged. What left me slightly dissatisfied with it, though, is the way like Enid and Rebecca themselves it tends to glide away from the characters' richness, contenting itself with angst and wisecracks. It lets us feel superior to Enid's world, but also to Enid. In "Crumb," Zwigoff presented the comic artist and his dysfunctional family with such unvarnished truth that it was fascinating and unsettling to watch. So, to a lesser degree, does "Ghost World," which is less real, more dreamy, more cynical. And, finally, less touching.

"Ghost World"

Directed by Terry Zwigoff; written by Daniel Clowes, Zwigoff, based on Clowes' comic book; photographed by Affonso Beato; edited by Carole Kravetz-Aykanian, Michael R. Miller; production designed by Edward T. McAvoy; music by David Kitay; produced by Lianne Halfon, John Malkovich, Russell Smith. A United Artists/Granada Film release; opens Friday, Aug. 3. Running time: 1:51. MPAA rating: R (strong language and some sexual content).

Enid Thora Birch

Rebecca Scarlett Johansson

Seymour Steve Buscemi

Josh Brad Renfro

Roberta Illeana Douglas

Enid's Dad Bob Balaban

Enid's ex-stepmom Teri Garr

Dana Stacey Travis