Saturday, September 20, 2008

Ghost Town.


He sees dead people.  Ghosts.  Lots of them.
Last night I saw "Ghost Town," a comedy starring Ricky Gervais, creator and lead actor of the original BBC version of "The Office," Téa Leoni and Greg Kinnear.  "Ghost Town" features Gervais as Dr. Bertram Pincus, a miserly dentist who is definitely not a people person.  In fact, he goes out of his way to avoid interactions with other people at all costs.  Luckily, being a dentist, he can stuff cotton into his patient's mouths if they talk too much.  Things start to change for Dr. Pincus after he "dies" for seven minutes during a routine colonoscopy procedure, waking up only to find himself able to see dead people.  Ghosts.  Lots of them.  These ghosts wander Manhattan, stuck in a kind of purgatorial limbo, needing to take care of the unfinished business that keeps them grounded.  They all want Dr. Pincus to help them tie up loose ends, the most persistent being Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear).  Frank, who comes off somewhere in between lovable and a slimeball, wants Dr. Pincus to interfere with his widow Gwen's (Téa Leoni) impending marriage to a man that Herlihy deems not so worthy of her attention.  
If at first you can't picture Ricky Gervais as a leading man in a romantic comedy, Gervais quickly convinces you otherwise, stealing the show with his acerbic wit and hilarious one-liners.  Yes, the plot is not terribly original, but the superb cast makes this ghost story stand out amongst the redundancy.  

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A well tasted movie been released and it is none other than Ghost town. as holly wood been accept Ricky Gervais makes his mark with it. They are just arrived with so much enthusiasm. Until the end, never to take eyes away. Because it was a fun based action all around. High quality DVD version and fully Digital sound Guaranteed for grate movie. I watch it on http://www.80millionmoviesfree.com