Disaffected teenage outcast Enid (a spot-on snarky performance by Thora Birch) and her equally sullen best friend Rebecca (a marvelously sour and aloof portrayal by Scarlett Johansson) find themselves at a crossroads in the wake of graduating from high school. Moreover, Enid feels sorry for fellow misfit Seymour (beautifully played with lovely hangdog grace by Steve Buscemi) after playing a cruel prank on him.Director Terry Twigoff, who also co-wrote the witty and perceptive script with Daniel Cloves, savagely skewers the stifling conformity of conventional consumerist small-town America, poignantly addresses the basic human need to fit in and belong even if it's on the fringes of society, maintains a splendidly dry'n'deadpan tone throughout, adroitly captures the awkward transition from adolescence to adulthood (Rebecca wants to grow up and get her own apartment while Enid tries to avoid thinking about what she's going to do with the rest of her life), and concludes things on a haunting ambiguous note. Moreover, it's acted with aplomb by a top-rate cast, with especially praiseworthy contributions from Illeana Douglas as ditsy overzealous art teacher Roberta, Brad Renfro as the easygoing Josh, Bob Balaban as Enid's nerdy ineffectual dad, Stacey Travis as the sweet Dana, Charles C. Stevenson as patient old man Norman, and David Sheridan as antagonistic goofball Doug. Affonso Beato's vibrant color cinematography provides a pleasing bright look. Great soundtrack of vintage blues tunes, too. A real treat.

Ghost World is an indie film about two young girls who have just graduated high school. They are deciding what to do next, hanging out, and messing with strangers. This movie starts out extremely strong, focusing on the dialog between Thora Birch and Scarlet Johannson, who play it cool and hang strong. About a third of the way in, the movie begins to veer off to focus more on Enid and her interactions with a middle aged loner named Seymour. Whereas the writing felt naturalistic early in the film, it gets pretty hard to buy the relationship between Seymour and Enid, and the story eventually deflates. The ending felt more like the filmmakers ran out of ideas than actual symbolism, and it left me hanging. However, I still watch many scenes of this movie over--the ironic humor hits perfectly more than a couple times. Some viewers have criticized this movie for being depressing, and things do go badly for several of the characters, but for me the only thing that is truly depressing is Enid's relationship with her father. Some of the things the characters go through are lessons they can emerge stronger from, but I don't imagine things improving between her and her dad. However, if Daniel Clowes were to write a followup looking at where the characters went later in life, I would certainly read it as soon as possible.

I'm not that good at expressing my thoughts into words but this movie is simply amazing. It's vastly underrated and it stars two amazing actresses. Thora Birch, from American Beauty, my all time favorite movie and Scarlett Johansson from Lost in Translation, my second favorite movie.If you haven't seen this movie, go out, see it. It's so worth it. It's about making your way through life after high school, finding yourself, the feeling of not fitting in. Something we've all been through. It really expresses the feelings of every teenager who's ever been depressed.

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."