Dead People Can Be Annoying

Why will I not see Dane Cook in My Best Friend’s Girl this week? Let me count the ways. On second thought, let me just tell you about another character that should answer the question quite nicely. I’ll leave the box-office to guys like Cook, and be content with guys like Ricky Gervais who never once try to convince me into laughing at them. Ghost Town answers the question “what do you get when you put a Hollywood screen-writer with a relative no-name in the US, a former TV actress, and a romantic comedy star in the same picture?” A formulaic mess? Not quite actually. At least not if Gervais has anything to say about it.

Bertram Pincus is a man who mostly keeps to himself, leaving his people skills nothing much to right home about. He plods about his daily routines walking from his apartment to his office where he works as a dentist, mostly trying to avoid any and everyone he should come in contact with. When Bertram goes into the hospital for a fairly routine surgery, he dies unexpectedly and is revived after seven minutes. The miraculous little event gives Bertram the ability, much to his brilliantly acted dismay, to see ghosts. As if that weren’t enough, these ghosts who are in limbo between our world and the next, endlessly follow Bertram around town asking him for his much needed help regarding their unfinished business. The worst of these is Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) who pokes and prods at Bertram until he eventually concedes to help break up the soon-to-be marriage of Herlihy’s widow (Tea Leoni). This puts Bertram in the middle of a love triangle with often very funny, if not always so unpredictable results.

Ghost Town is a genuinely funny script that tries to tug at our heartstrings as well. It’s a film about forgiveness, love and regret. Most of the lessons revolve around the film’s central Ebenezer Scrooge-like player Ricky Gervais as Bertram Pincus. Gervais is just one of a few reasons why this movie might fly under your initial radar. A product of the UK, Gervais starred as Michael Scott in the BBC version of the hit series “the Office”. His dry comedic style works wonders in a formulaic Hollywood film like this one that would other wise just be an excuse to get a few comedians in front of the camera and let them be funny. What Gervais does is much better, he consistently plays frustrated to often times hilarious results. We struggle right along with him when he stumbles over his sentences and back-pedals over his curmudgeonly placed jabs at co-workers. And just when you think you don’t have sympathy for this man, his desperate attempts to flirt with Tea Leoni’s character pull him back in to your good graces. While there are no unexpected plot-turns, and the clichés make this all too familiar territory, It’s the performances that quietly raise the film slightly above mediocrity.

3.5/5