Gervais' Ghost Town

the word isn't officially out on whether or not this is a total bomb or not. mostly i want to see it for gervais because i think his sense of humor is absolutely hilarious and i love all of is comedic show projects to date. ew's recent review doesn't make it sound too horrible. it got a B- at least, i have seen films i liked get lower than that. maybe it might be a decent film afterall. what i'm really in the mood is for some light hearted comedy, nothing intense. i do not know if we will see this in theater or wait for netflix, probably wait but this is the kind of movie i want to watch when i feel sick. laughter sometimes is the best medicine. i'm still not feeling all that good although i went to bed earlier last nite and i am a bit better due to drinking gingerale this morning/afternoon. hoping its a good sign? sigh.

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Critics' Grades and Average
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
B-
Critics' Average
B-

HE'S ALIVE! Ricky Gervais sees dead people in Ghost Town

Sarah Shatz

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Credits

Release Date: Sep 19, 2008; Rated: PG-13; Length: 103 Minutes; Genre: Comedy; With: Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear

B-

By Lisa Schwarzbaum

Lisa Schwarzbaum

Lisa Schwarzbaum is a film critic for EW

Ghost Town is diverting enough, but it's also the kind of high-concept studio concoction Ricky Gervais might have ridiculed in his great backstage-showbiz sitcom Extras. The British comic plays Bertram Pincus, a misanthropic dentist in New York City who develops an ability to see dead people; to be specific, the dead are noodgy, solid-looking ghosts of the type that populated the Cary Grant movie Topper. Each has unfinished
 business with the living for which they want Pincus to act as intermediary — and none 
is noodgier than a slick businessman (Greg Kinnear) who was cheating on his wife (Téa Leoni) when he bit the dust. Now the remorseful dead cad wants the living dentist to stop the good widow's impending second marriage to an unsuitably dull fellow (Billy Campbell).

Gervais, who created (with Stephen Merchant) the inimitable original BBC version of The Office and starred, unforgettably, as 
incompetent boss David Brent, specializes in the hilarity of human discomfort; he's a performer who works best when supported by characters as sharp and fully drawn as 
he is. Here, though, director David Koepp (the A-list screenwriter of Spider-Man, working from his own script) handles Gervais with nervous delicacy, as if the star is an odd import whose striking, foreign comedic
 persona needs to be cushioned by squishier, more familiar American displays of mildness. (Kinnear and Leoni, too, are muted.)

Maybe now Gervais can do his own sitcom about a unique British comedian who comes to conquer Hollywood, only to find himself cast in a generic 1930s-type happy-ending romp about dentists and noodgy ghosts. B-

More with Ricky Gervais:

Dave Karger talks comedy with Ricky Gervais at the Toronto Film Festival