Reviewed by Stuart O'Connor
Stars Greg Kinnear, Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni, Aasif Mandvi, Bridget Moloney, Brad Oscar, Kristen Wiig, Billy Campbell, Alan Ruck, Raymond Lee
Written by David Koepp & John Kamps
Certification UK 12A | US PG-13 | Australia M
Runtime 102 minutes
Directed by David Koepp
Can Ricky Gervais act? He certainly loves to tell us that he can't, and this likeable, amiable comedy — his first outing on the big screen — doesn't do anything to prove him wrong.
Gervais plays New York dentist Bertram Pincus, a man whose people skills are almost non-existent. A man who makes Simon Cowell look like the Dalai Lama. While in hospital for a colonoscopy, he dies for seven minutes on the table (the idiot asked for a general anaesthetic) and now finds that he can see dead people. And the dead people, when they learn that he can see and hear him, flock to him, pestering him to do them favours — most of which invlove passing messages on to the living — so than can complete their unfinished business on Earth before passing over to "the other side". Of course, being the snide misanthrope he is, Pinkus is having none of it. One deadite, though, is particularly persistent. He's Frank Herlihy (Kinnear), and he needs Pincus to break up the looming marriage of his widow, Gwen (Leoni). And, this being a rom-com, when Pincus meets Gwen (who, quite coincidentally, lives in his building) he starts to fall for her.
Ghost Town follows the predictable rom-com path — at no point do you ever feel like you don't know where the story is going. But for once, that really doesn't matter too much. Gervais is not your typical handsome, leading man — he's sure no Clooney, or McDreamy — but here that counts in his favour. It means that as Pincus, he has to work that much harder to win over the lovely Gwen. Of course, you have to wonder what would make her attracted to such an unloveable sod in the first place. And that's one of the problems with the film — it's often inconstent. There are laughs to be had, and the three leads all excel in their roles (yes, even Gervais), but the romance lacks any real chemistry and it feels too much like a cut-rate Heart and Souls, the 1993 Robert Downey Jr film with a very similar theme. But for all its faults, Ghost Town is still loads better than the average rom-com. And Ricky, if you're reading this: you're not as bad an actor as you think you are.