Movie Review: ‘Ghost Town,‘ uneven, yet moving

DreamWorks Pictures

Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear star in ‘Ghost Town’ - 2008

By Daniel Neman, Media General News Service
Published: September 22, 2008

Sniffles in a comedy?

The Ricky Gervais comedy “Ghost Town” contains a sequence toward the end that is so unexpectedly moving — even though the sequence itself is totally expected — that you hear sniffles of emotion throughout the theater.

And this is a Ricky Gervais comedy, meaning it is about a self-centered boor who is uncomfortable with others and has an ability to make any social gaffe exponentially worse. It’s not the sort of thing you expect to find suddenly emotional.

Gervais stars as Bertram, a Manhattan dentist who, as he puts it, doesn’t hate crowds, just the individuals in them. As a result of a problematic colonoscopy, he is suddenly able to see dead people.

These he doesn’t like any better than the living. The ghost who makes the biggest pest of himself is Frank, played by Greg Kinnear. Frank’s widow lives in Bertram’s building, and she is engaged to a humorless man who is wrong for her. Frank says that if Bertram can break them up, then Frank’s unfinished business will be done and he can pass out of this world.

You can see where this is going, especially because the widow is played by Téa Leoni. She is an Egyptologist who can see through Bertram’s misogynist bluster to find his Gervaisian charm.

The film is co-written and directed by David Koepp, whose better scripts include “Jurassic Park,“ “The Paper” and “Panic Room.“ This time out, his tone is more uneven, which explains the part about sniffles at a comedy. He swerves from the silly to the sappy, from the occasional physical comedy gag to the uncomfortable character-driven comedy that Gervais specializes in.

In those particular scenes, it is clear that Gervais is ad-libbing, and he is wonderful at it. But the ad-lib scenes are so different from the strictly scripted ones that it is a bit unsettling; the effect is to shake the illusion of reality, it makes us remember that we are watching a movie.

Leoni turns in another likable, quirky performance; she is best in off-kilter comedies such as this (and last year’s “You Kill Me”) that do not call for a typical romantic heroine. She plays smart but unassured, which makes her an appropriate match for a performer like Gervais.

“Ghost Town” has its good moments and its lesser moments, but those emotional scenes will really get you.