GHOST TOWN movie review by Gary Dean Murray

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GHOST TOWN

Review by Gary Dean Murray

Ricky Gervais is a relatively unknown comic genius. The creator or the BBC hits of The Office and Extras, he has been a hero of understated and uncomfortable comic situations. The idea behind both series has been those moments that are funny to everyone except the people involved. Though a monstrous star in England, this funnyman has seen little action here in the US. His big starring vehicle is the romantic comedy Ghost Town.

This little gem of a story starts with a death. Frank (Greg Kinnear) is a NYC businessman walking down the street, Blackberry in hand, talking to his real estate agent about a mistake. It seems that the agent called the wife Gwen (Tea Leoni) about a mid-town apartment. The apartment wasn’t for the wife but for the girlfriend. As he is arguing on his phone, an air conditioner falls from an apartment above and Frank is now not a part of the living.

Flash-forward about a year later and we meet Dr Bertram Pincus (Ricky) a DDS with little bedside manners, or any manners for that matter. He lives just next door to his office and is one of the most self-absorbed individuals on the planet. Our not so loveable dentist has to go into the hospital for a lower GI test. Now instead of taking the local anaesthetic, he decides to actually be put under for the test. After waking, he goes home running into different individuals who can see him. They all react with astonishment. It seems that our man died on the operating table for seven minutes and now, in shades of The Sixth Sense, he can see dead people.

This annoys him. Now, every lost soul wants our dentist to fulfill the last undone deed. All Pincus wants is to be left alone. But Frank finally convinces Pincus to help and stop his lovely widow from marrying the wrong guy, a lawyer. When Pincus finally notices the woman who lives a floor under him in the same building, he is smitten. So Pincus decides the best way to break up the couple is to place a seed of doubt in her mind. The rest of Ghost Town is the relationship between the two living people who are being watch by a bunch of dead ones

The entire film is a mix between Cyrano and Heart and Souls with just a tad of The Sixth Sense added in for good measure.

When one sees Tea Leoni on the screen, a question does seem to bubble up - when was the last time anyone saw her in a movie? But this role does remind everyone just how charming she can be and how much the camera still loves her. Still coming across as a stunning beauty, Tea also shows some great acting chops being remorseful in some scenes and witty in others. There is this delicate balance that she performs fleshing out what could have been a stock character.

Over the years Greg Kinnear has proven that he can do all kinds of roles. Once the romantic comic stereotype, he proved in films like Auto Focus and As Good As it Gets that he can do more than just be charming. This is a charming role, but he is a bit of a cad while doing it. He delivers his lines with a great deal of skill and comedic talent.

Ricky Gervais is looking more and more like W.C. Fields just without the bulbous nose. I never thought he could play the romantic comic role but this movie proves that he can handle it with a certain fish out of water grace. He gives hope for all the less than average guys who struggle to win the woman above their means. This role should win him an entire new audience and give him a boost up the career ladder.

Co-writer and director David Koepp does keep the film at a brisk clip moving the story along. But, there are no true ‘laugh out loud’ moments and more simply amusing ones. Running along more like a comedy of manners than a full-bore laugh-fest, the film does little with the premise. The ending goes full bore at the heartstrings and changes the pace to almost an uncomfortable degree.

While not a great movie, Ghost Town is a fun little romp on the darker side of life and death. It is much more charming than bust a gut funny.

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