Ghost Town [12A]

The phrase “get a life” was invented for New York dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais).

After something goes wrong with a routine surgical procedure, the pathologically anti-social Pincus’s worst nightmare comes true when he starts seeing dead people. Worse still, they can see him and start following him around in the hope that he’ll do them that one last favour that will allow them to move on.

It’s not so much a haunting as a stalking, with the role of chief stalker being taken by Frank Herlihy (Gregg Kinnear). In life, love-rat Frank saw nothing wrong with two-timing his wife Gwen (Tea Leoni). In death, Frank sees no irony in blackmailing Pincus into derailing Gwen’s new love interest, human rights lawyer Richard (Billy Campbell).

This is an unpretentious light comedy that does what it says on the tin. Gervais is excellent as the depressed driller-and-filler and there are fine performances from the supporting cast. A good choice for a rainy winter evening.

Helen Ward (DI Reviewer), 03/11/08

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Ricky Gervais' brand of comedy may be familiar in Britain - but the States is lapping it up. In Ghost Town, he's a dentist reluctantly in hospital for a minor op who 'dies' for a few minutes on the operating table - and emerges with the 'gift' for seeing dead people. All around us all of the time, they've been waiting for someone to see them - someone who can put right the one thing that'll help them rest in peace.

Playing it like Oliver Hardy crossed with Ebenezer Scrooge, Gervais' spouts pompously selfish one-liners and put-downs to all and sundry, including the pretty woman in his apartment block whose philandering husband - Greg Kinnear - is the ghost who haunts Gervais the most.

Whimsical and amusing, it's a gift role for Gervais, who looks set to step into Bill Murray's deadpan shoes and career. For a 12A, though, it's occasionally coarse, a few expletives slipping unnecessarily under the radar.

But Tea Leoni is a lovely foil for Gervais' cynical romanticism and Ghost Town is, at times, an acutely tender story about overcoming loneliness and the hurts we can cause others.

Surprisingly, it's Greg Kinnear's in-your-face spook who irritates the most, rather than Gervais. But there's enough quirky banter and set-piece amusement to keep this the right side of entertaining.

Ricky Gervais is nicely developing from a one-note personality to a more rounded screen presence. Ghost Town won't be his best film, perhaps, but it's spirited enough and will certainly do for now.

Glenn Watson (DI Reviewer), 03/11/08

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In this romantic comedy, Ricky Gervais plays the misanthrope dentist Pincus who dies - “just a little bit” - during a routine medical procedure and wakes up being able to see ghosts. There are plenty, it seems, at large in New York City. One such restless spirit, Frank (Kinnear), persuades Pincus to help him prevent his widow, Gwen (Tea Leoni), marrying her new boyfriend, a jumped-up human rights lawyer. Pincus sets out to seduce her, with Frank in tow as his personal advisor. Instead of being an irksome reprise of its antecedents’ tropes – Ghost, The Sixth Sense, Roxanne, among others – this film works a treat, mainly thanks to Gervais.

Often he appears to have popped in from a different filmset and occasionally gives a very flat reading of his lines (presumably the boring ones he hadn’t made up on the spot) all of which somehow conspires to make his character more sympathetic and believable amid the schmaltz of this otherwise typical Hollywood fare. Nobody tell Daniel Day Lewis this is how it can be done. Pincus is also of course very much more amusing than Daniel Plainview, though there’s nothing too outrageous or ribtickling here, just consistent chuckles to be had. Considering how other British comics have fared going to Hollywood, this movie can be considered a small triumph for the breed.

Minor characters pop up, promise a little, then never reappear; a comedy dog is wheeled on for ten minutes, surely only to provide focus to an otherwise directionless scene; Gwen’s ditziness is inconsistent and unconvincing, and there are strange and pointless asides involving an Egyptian mummy and Pincus’ choice of cocktail. Was this film made up on the spot? Perhaps, knowing Gervais’ propensity to adlib, or maybe there’s a 3 hour director’s cut in the offing which will restore meaning to all this fluff.

The film gets by on charm, which it delivers wholesale – Kinnear in particular is in good form as the debonair but guilt-ridden shade. The manifestation of the ghosts is also pure Capra: the film eschews much in the way of special effects, giving it a lovely, old-fashioned feel.

The ending is the icing on the cake; subtle and understated, it validates a lot of what has gone before, bringing this fantastical tale back into the real world.

Chris Giangiordano (DI Reviewer), 01/11/08

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