REVIEW - Ghost Town

Normally, a film directed by David Koepp (who I'm sure is a very nice person, but I dislike much of his work) and starring Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni in a paranormal semi-romantic Cyrano-esque comedy film would be the sort of film that I would never voluntarily watch unless I was a captive audience on an airplane or something. However, when the star of the film is Ricky Gervais, I'm willing to give it a shot. Cautiously.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Gervais, he is a former 80s (minor) pop star who later turned to situation comedy at the BBC with The Office, firmly solidifying himself as one of the funnier human beings on the planet.After making inroads in American television with his series Extras, Gervais is now working his way into American films. Ghost Town is his first starring role in such an endeavor.

Gervais plays Bertram Pincus, a dentist who doesn't particularly care for humanity in general. While getting a colonoscopy (from SNL's Kristen Wiig, who is also hilarious in her brief appearances), Pincus is clinically dead on the table for seven minutes. Upon his release from the hospital, he finds that he can see dead people!

Of course, these dead people want something from him, namely to not be wandering around among the living anymore. But the conceit of the film is that the dead will stick around until the living can let them go, so these ghosts need Pincus to communicate stuff to people. Greg Kinnear's character is still around because his widow, played by Tea Leoni, can't quite let him go. The reason for this is almost not even a twist, but I won't mention it here anyway because it doesn't really matter.

Basically, if Ricky Gervais wasn't in this film it wouldn't be worth mentioning. The plot is uninteresting; the characters, Pincus aside, are pretty straightforward. Gervais is the draw here, and I suspect there's a good deal of ad-libbing from him to make scenes more interesting. There is a particular scene where he attempts to explain why he said "How can teeth be self-righteous?" that is in itself worth watching the film for.

Gervais' next film, This Side of the Truth, is coming in March. He is co-directing. I suspect it will be good since apparently Patrick Stewart is going to be in it. YouTube has a series of videos on the making of the film. You think there'd be a trailer available somewhere, but I checked all the usual places. Warner Bros. marketing is probably too busy trying to make sure all those anti-Fox press releases get out to the movie news sites.