It may be a ghost movie, but it definitely does not merit a “boo”.
“Ghost Town” comes across as witty and enjoyable, owing largely to its leading man, Ricky Gervais, the star of the popular British comedy series The Office and Extras. The movie is oddly formulaic, with a plotline straight from the book of romantic comedy ideas. Gervais’ performance keeps “Ghost Town” from falling flat on its face with banality.
The plot is reminiscent of most romantic comedies: a man falls in love with a woman (Téa Leoni) he has always ignored and starts to turn his life around. From here, the movie starts to depart from the stereotype.
To start, the opening scene finds us tailing a suave and debonair, if shamelessly immoral, man named Frank Herlihy, played by Greg Kinnear. He strolls through the city, wearing a formal suit and berating his real-estate agent over the phone for telling his (Herlihy’s) wife about the new love nest he had just bought for his mistress. A rich, handsome adulterer with a penchant for secrets? This sounds like a great leading man!
But wait. He’s not. And within a few minutes, he’s dead. (An air conditioning unit falls from the window of an apartment building, which he notices and dodges into the road to avoid. He is promptly hit by a bus.)
Enter Ricky Gervais as Dr. Bertram Pincus, a deadpan misanthrope who seems to have gotten into dentistry as a way of professionally silencing people. When he cannot shut people up by obstructing their mouths with dental instruments or plaster for taking impressions, Pincus effectively quiets and alienates people with a blank, uncaring stare or a sly patronizing quip.
After a botched colonoscopy renders him dead for seven minutes, Pincus awakens from his flatline to find that he can see dead people. (Don’t think “The Sixth Sense”; there is no gory makeup here.) Now faced with an entire town of the deceased whom he cannot silence or avoid despite his best efforts, Pincus reluctantly agrees to help Herlihy break up his widow and her self-righteous new boyfriend if the legions of other undead citizens with unfinished business agree to leave him in peace.
Let the hilarious hi-jinx ensue!
Pincus, who happens to live in the same building as Herlihy’s widow, finds himself attracted to her, apparently an odd new feeling for him as a people-hater. He fumbles over his words, trying to joke about dentistry or the times that he didn’t hold the elevator for her and stole her cab. Shockingly, she is not immediately won over.
The progression of their relationship is hindered by her undead husband, always hovering beside them and making additions to their conversations that only Pincus can hear, which ultimately make Pincus even more awkward, especially as he makes references to her dead husband whom he’s not supposed to know.
Gervais plays the part like no one else could, reviving the dry fast-paced humor and awkward pauses that made his performance in The Office (UK) magical. In reality, he is the movie’s saving grace; without him, none of the jokes would fall, even classic jokes about how Chinese names sound funny. Though the plot is essentially old and thin, the resolution, wherein Pincus learns to accept and understand the people he once found irritating and loathsome, satisfies because Gervais makes it believable. Overall, the movie is good for a romantic comedy, but only because Gervais shines in his role.
Ricky Gervais being quite the misanthrope
No comments:
Post a Comment