| Film |
Ghost World |
| Year |
2001 |
| Rating |
★★☆☆☆ |
| Summary |
Realistic to the point of having no point. |
As far as comic based movies go, Ghost World is in the style of the later American Splendor rather than, say, X-Men. It's very much a character driven story. While this is fine in itself, I can't help thinking there wasn't enough character development for that type of story.
I know I generally complain about the geek girl, goth girl, insinuated lesbian or any other form of social misfit becoming a happy, trendy, straight consumer by the end of a character driven movie (such as in the later Mean Girls), so at least that fate doesn't befall the protagonist of this one. However, as far as I know it's generally accepted that one of two things should happen to a story's main character by the end: either she should be a much better person (again, as in Mean Girls), or a much worse person (as in Requiem for a Dream). I don't mind which, but she has to grow as a character until she's reached some sort of logical conclusion.
With this film, however, we watch her pretty much destroy a random old man's life, plus annoy her best friend, but then she neither sorts herself out nor plunges further into depression. You can see a mile off that a very minor character, who seems more like a metaphor than a real person, will inspire her actions at the end of the film, and that's exactly what happens, but the end note isn't a fulfilling one. It's inconsequential.
Ironically, the reason this story is so lifeless and uninteresting is probably because it's too real. This story seems to be based on the author's own life, and I think it shows that nowhere near enough effort was spent dramatising it, bringing it to life by making it larger than life and taking the actual real life out of it.
There are some good moments, and it's a neat cast, but at the end of the day, if I want a story about a bunch of people without a specific goal, and thus a story that has no satisfying ending, I have my life. If you're a writer, you should only steal events from your own life if they're interesting. If your life's been uneventful, there are plenty of other people out there who have been through worse. Try writing about them instead.