Ghost Town
Hilariously serious!
Seeing ghosts is always a fun theme for a movie. In most you have either children (The Sixth Sense) or psychics (Ghost) having the curse – or gift – of seeing ghosts…the rest are just trying to kill the living. The other, less explored avenue is when the main character has a near death experience that allows them to get the sight. The only one I remember is The Frighteners, with Michael J. Fox – a highly recommended DVD, if you haven’t seen it yet.
Ghost Town centers on a very selfish, isolated dentist, Dr. Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) , who doesn’t hate crowds, only the people in them. This, amongst other little quirks, leaves him with severely hampered people skills. After a routine operation kills him for seven minutes, Dr. Pincus quickly discovers that he now has the ability to see ghosts. All of whom want something from him, especially Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) , who wants him to break up the impending marriage of his widow, Gwen (Téa Leoni) , in exchange for ridding him of the pushy spectres.
The comedy in this flick is sparse, but it makes up for it by making those moments exceedingly funny. Both Gervais and Leoni were fantastic. I’ve never seen Leoni laugh like that in any film, which leads me to believe some of those moments were purely real. Kinnear, who has thrived on supporting roles, shows why he likes living there. It’s a definite comfort zone for him and he plays the part effortlessly.
The plot wasn’t surprising, and there wasn’t some magical twist at the end, but the story is engaging enough and very entertaining. Ghost Town should be on your must see list for the fall.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Excellent movie, I got to see this with the wife and the famous Amadarwin! I was a little peeved we didn’t get to meet Ricky Gervais, and after seeing the film I was only more peeved. He did an amazing job and Kristen Wiig (who is the most talented actress on SNL by the way, and very underused) stole the scenes she was in with him. The casting was super, the scoring was good, and there was a scene that had someone in the audience laughing so loud and so uncontrollably I thought they were going to need oxygen by the end. Ricky delivers his lines drier than the Sahara desert – and he plays the straight man better than anyone on the planet right now. I look forward to anything else he is going to release and can’t wait for more Extras too!