Ghost
Town
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.
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