Ghost World
2000
| Thora Birch as Enid |
| Scarlett Johansson as Rebecca |
| Steve Buscemi as Seymour |
Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johanson) have just graduated high school, though Enid must make up an art class in summer school. The girls wittle away their time, not choosing to head to college. At a cafe, they notice customers that look like “Satanists” and they decide to follow them. While trailing, they run across the ’50’s diner Wowsville, an authentic ’50s restaurant with rap music and a waiter they call Weird Al due to his name being Al and his hair resembling Weird Al’s. While eating there, they read the personals of the paper, and run across a “Missed Connections” ad where a guy is wanting to meet up with a blonde he helped find a contact lens for. They decide to give him a call and pretend to be the girl, and to have him meet her at Wowsville. They then bug their friend Josh to hang out with them at the diner when the man shows up. He does, is named Seymour and is played by Steve Buscemi, orders a vanilla shake, and waits, only to be disappointed. The girls follow him back to his place. Later they try to find out what apartment he lives in, and see him in part of a garage sale the apartment complex is running. There Enid discusses records with him for a bit, finding our his name is Seymore, and purchases one before they leave. The girls describe him as clueless, but Enid thinks that makes him almost attractive. Eventually Enid listens to the record and really likes the song Devil Got My Woman, and returns to discuss it with Seymour. Seymour invites her to a party where a lot of record collectors like him will be, and Enid eventually goes, dragging Rebecca along, who is hit on by David Cross, much to her disdain. Enid talks to Seymore who is a collector, and Enid decides she will get him a girlfriend. While out girlfriend shopping, Enid gets Seymour to take her into an adult store, where she gets a catwoman headpiece. We find out Rebecca is working at a Starbucks ripoff complete with annoying customers.
Later Enid and Seymour go to a concert where an old Ragtime musician is playing that Seymour has an old 78 of. While headed there, we see Seymour gets tense while he drives. At the concert, the old musician is the opening act for a terrible rock band masquerading as a blues band. Enid tries to get a girl to talk to Seymour, but he goes off on a long discussion about how the old guy was playing closer to ragtime than blues. In any event, it ends up a dud for the night, and Seymour feels he cannot relate to anyone on the planet. Later at his place Enid finds an old racist painting, and finds out that Cook’s Chicken used to be called Coon’s Chicken and their ad slogan was a big lipped racist caricature of a black man. She uses the painting in her summer art class and shows up the superfeminist girl that had been sucking up to the teacher. Enid then begins a job working at a movie theater. But she gets fired after the first day. She later tries to hold a garage sale to sell some of her stuff, but cannot part with any of it (because the other people don’t deserve it) and ends up selling nothing. It is Seymour’s birthday, and while Enid is there the actual blonde girl who lost her contact calls and leaves a message. Enid convinces him to call her back and he makes a date. Enid blows off going out with Rebecca to be home for when Seymore calls after his date goes sour, but instead he ends up taking the date back to his place.
Enid gets a scholarship offer from her summer school teacher for an art college. At a show that exhibits the classes artwork, the old Coon’s Chicken logo painting causes a stir and has to be removed. Enid doesn’t even go, she wants Seymore to go with her but he is spending too much time with the blonde lady. Enid later fights with Rebecca and they end up not looking for places to live together anymore nor speaking with each other. Enid’s father is getting married to a women she doesn’t care for. Enid then finds out that her scholarship is ruined and she was forced to get a failing grade in the art class because of the Coon’s Chicken painting fallout. Being depressed, she ends up at Seymour’s place and they end up having sex. Seymour dumps the blonde girl, and Enid makes up with Rebecca and moves in with her. Enid starts avoiding Seymour. When news of the painting reaches Seymour’s work, he gets in trouble and starts looking for Enid, but cannot find her. Rebecca tells him that the found him by the classified ad trick. He looks at Enid’s notebook and thinks Josh has something to do with it, and goes to where Josh works and tries to smash the place up, but ends up having an attack. At the hospital, Enid shows up and they make amends. There she sees Norman, still waiting at the bus stop, but this time a bus comes, and he gets on and it drives away.
Tells Seymore she has a fantasy of just disappearing somewhere and not letting anyone know. She gets on the bus Norman took, and rides away. Overall the movie was pretty good but lacking in a few areas. The girls came off as unlikable at a few points. Overall, the movie is pretty much criticizing everyone. If you are one of the people who didn’t like the movie, you are probably one of the targets. (Yes that sounds cliche, but I don’t care, so nyeh nyeh nyeh!) The soundtrack rules, I highly recommend it.
Rated 8/10
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