The 2008 comedy Ghost Town didn’t exactly tear up the North American box office, earning just $13.2 million during its run at theaters. But the film actually received pretty good reviews, and did fairly well overseas — particularly in the UK, which is not all that surprising since British comedian Ricky Gervais is far more famous over there than he is here. Despite the film’s lackluster performance in theaters, I decided to give the DVD a shot. And I’m glad I did, as Ghost Town turned out to be better than expected!
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Gervais stars as Bertram Pincus, a misanthropic New York City dentist who barely takes time to notice other people. He doesn’t say hello to anyone else in his apartment building, brushes past the doorman without a word, and shuts himself up in his rooms as soon as he returns from work. While at work, he doesn’t bother getting to know his patients at all, nor does he take time to interact with Dr. Prashar (played by Aasif Mandvi), the other dentist at the practice.
Pincus begins to change after undergoing a colonoscopy at the local hospital. He chose general anesthesia, even though it wasn’t necessary for the routine procedure, and later learns that he actually died for seven minutes as a result of a reaction to the drug. Pincus seems none the worse for wear after this experience — except that he can now see all the spirits of dead people walking around NYC. This includes a recently deceased man named Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who used to live in Pincus’ building. All the dead spirits want Pincus to pass messages on to living loved ones, but he refuses. Frank, however, doesn’t give up so easily.
Frank wants Pincus to prevent Frank’s widow Gwen (Téa Leoni) from marrying her current boyfriend Richard (Bill Campbell). Frank thinks that something’s not quite right about Richard, and worries that he might be trying to take advantage of Gwen. Pincus at first doesn’t want anything to do with Frank or his problems, but after Frank makes it perfectly clear that he’s capable of annoying Pincus to no end, Pincus reluctantly agrees.
The rest of the film then shows Pincus trying to become a bit friendlier towards Gwen so she’ll listen to him about Richard. Along the way, he finds himself falling for her, but knows that he’ll have to truly change in order for her to reciprocate the feelings. This being a romantic comedy, you can be sure that everything falls into place by the end.
My Reaction: I was really surprised at how entertaining Ghost Town was. Ricky Gervais was a big reason for this, as he’s actually quite amusing in his role as Dr. Pincus. I don’t know if I can call him outright funny, because I don’t think there are any real laugh out loud moments in the film, but I definitely smiled a lot at many of the things he said. He seems like a pretty charming guy, and was able to carry the movie along just fine.
The plot of Ghost Town was rather average. If you’ve ever seen the television show Ghost Whisperer, then you basically know how the movie works. The ending was rather predictable too (except for Pincus’ second near-death experience), but that’s forgivable, since the standard rom-com formula calls for happily-ever-after.
Overall, Ghost Town is absolutely worth the couple bucks that it costs to rent it. I’m glad I finally learned what all the Ricky Gervais fuss is about (he won an Emmy for his work on Extras and is well-known on the stand-up circuit and from the UK version of The Office) and am open to seeing anything else he’s in from now on. Ghost Town won’t bowl you over, but it’s a good popcorn flick. I give it 3 stars out of 5.
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