Ghost Town

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Ghost Town is a totally pleasant and often laugh-out-loud funny movie that works on many different levels: it's a supernatural comedy, a character comedy, and a romantic comedy, and underneath it all, it even has something to say.

The movie marks the peculiar collaboration between Ricky Gervais, who created and starred in the original The Office in the U.K. and enjoys cult status here in the U.S., and writer/director David Koepp, who makes his living writing for Steven Spielberg on projects like War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Koepp has also directed in the past, but they've mostly been low-key thrillers (Stir of Echoes, Secret Window). Ghost Town is his first comedy, and it's clearly a labor of love. He could've done a lot worse than Gervais, who elevates most of the movie from bemused-grin territory to laugh-out-loud status and proves that he can excel even inside mainstream Hollywood formula.

Gervais plays Bertram Pincus, a dentist and a raging misanthrope who avoids talking to people at all costs. He goes to the hospital for a colonoscopy, where he's accidentally killed during surgery but then revived seven minutes later. This produces the unfortunate after-effect of being able to see ghosts. It wouldn't be so much of a problem, except that they all realize he can see them, and they all want his help completing their unfinished business. Pincus wants none of it.

The ghost who finally succeeds in getting Pincus to help him is Frank (Greg Kinnear, wearing a tuxedo for the entire duration of the film). His wife Gwen (Tea Leoni) is about to marry a humorless do-gooder that Frank is convinced only wants Gwen for her money. The deal is, if Pincus breaks up the engagement, Frank will get all the other ghosts to stop bothering him. But, of course, Gwen turns out to be attractive and funny and Bertram is instantly smitten.

Gervais carries the film, but the performances are good across the board. Leoni brings her unique brand of loveliness and accessibility to her role, while Kinnear clearly has no bones about playing a guy who, though affable and well-meaning, is less than sympathetic (it's revealed very early that he was cheating on Gwen). And Kristen Wiig, like she did in Knocked Up, steals all her scenes as the colonoscopy surgeon.

One problem: not much is explained in the end. I've often had an issue with Koepp's endings -- I strongly disliked the last twenty minutes of both of those Spielberg movies I mentioned, although now's not the time to rant about them -- and here, too, things are ever so slightly off. It's like Koepp found what he felt was the perfect note to end the movie on and stopped there, forgetting about all the loose ends. You'll walk out of the theater with a smile on your face, but you might also be ...