Ghost Town
2 Waffles!

I guess they can’t all be as good as Extras or The Office, but can’t our favorite British funny man come up with a movie to get us excited?

Ricky Gervais stars as Dr. Pincus – an anti-social dentist who wants to avoid human interaction by all means necessary. While undergoing a medical procedure, Pincus legally dies for several minutes and is revived. However, everywhere he goes he sees and hears the ghosts of Manhattan, who want to use him to help rectify the undone business in their lives (yes, that’s so Ghost Whisperer). The chief ghost is Frank (Greg Kinnear), who wants Pincus to help stop his widow’s, Gwen (Tea Leoni), marriage to a horrible gold digger, Richard (Billy Campbell), and promises to get the others ghosts to leave him alone if he is successful.

Will Pincus help Frank and the other ghosts?

How can he stop Gwen from marrying Richard?

Does he look as good in a t-shirt and jeans as Jennifer Love Hewitt?

Ghost Town is a short film idea painfully stretched out to full length feature in the worst way possible. It’s as if Rosie O’Donnell tried to slip into a Carrie Underwood-sized teeny weeny bikini instead of a tasteful one piece. Not enough material.

Writer/director David Koepp (the man who wrote Spider-Man wrote this?!?!?!) and co-writer John Kamps make Gervias and the cast stretch out too many scenes to painful lengths, since they want to play up the comedy aspect of the story without using too much of the Ghost Whisperer-style part of the plot where Pincus is supposed to help the dead finish their work on earth. Then, they turn to potty humor when desperate, which isn’t exactly the level of humor people attracted to this cast would be looking for.

Luckily, Gervais makes Ghost Town almost passable. While he too often is forced to drone on and on and on to keep scenes going when the material doesn’t merit it, Gervais also knows how to deliver the better stuff in the funniest way possible. You’ll never accuse him of graduating from the Samuel L. Jackson School of Overacting, since he couldn’t do over the top if you gave him a ladder and a rocket booster, but his timing is impeccable, and his reactions to others around him often make us feel like he is acting like we would.

Gervais and Kinnear don’t have much chemistry together, so the audience can feel Ghost Town dragging on and on, but we get a nice emotional sequence towards the end, even if it is all very predictable.

Ghost Town rated PG-13 for some strong language, sexual humor and drug references.