PopSyndicate.com

A layer of nuance and bitter wit saves Ghost Town from being just another romantic comedy with a twist.

You may know someone like Bertram Pincus, dentist and sourpuss. If you’re like me, you may even be him from time to time.

Bertram (Ricky Gervais) is scathing in his reflexive distaste for all things social, a man who prefers peace and quiet, and likes his job because his patients can’t talk while he’s working. Bertram is funny, in his way, but there’s a meanness to his humor that any friend of sarcasm can identify as a mask for pain. Unfortunately, that kind of pain can easily become self-perpetuating, something Ghost Town knows well.

Bertram may well carry on at arm’s length for the rest of his life, if not for a freak near-death experience during a colonoscopy (yes, you read that right) that gives him the ability to see the dead walking among us. Given that Bertram spends all of his life within 30 blocks of Central Park, that is very many dead people indeed, and once they get wise to his newfound ability they hound him for help resolving their unfinished business.

Most prominent of these is Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear, amping up the smarm), a rich adulterer who wants his widow Gwen (Téa Leoni) to break off her engagement with a humorless do-gooder lawyer. Gwen, it so happens, lives in Bertram’s building, and is no stranger to his misanthropic ways. Gwen is also passionate about her archaeology work and happens to look like Téa Leoni. You can see where this is going.

Ghost Town is a fun movie, an easy and sometimes lopsided mix of romantic comedy and “unfinished business” ghost story where a cranky grouch learns the value of embracing and helping others. This isn’t a new message, but it is an interesting one to see delivered by someone like Mr. Gervais. (He’s best known as the creator and star of the original U.K. version of The Office and the HBO series Extras.)

His humor is that of shared embarrassment, where the audience and characters can only gawk as someone (usually a character played by Mr. Gervais himself) says or does something outlandish, notices he’s gone too far and then keeps going anyway. Injecting that kind of comedic presence into an otherwise straightforward comedy is a sign that Ghost Town is more than skin deep. This is not a “hilarious” movie, per se, but there are many laughs to be found. Some of them are painful.

And there’s the business of the ghosts. They’re not the pale chain-draggers of a Dickens story; they’re just everyday folks wearing the clothes they died in. (Watch out for Naked Guy.) One ghost’s daughter is fighting with her sister, and the final letter that would set it all straight is just out of reach. Another ghost’s young son lost his favorite stuffed toy on the day his dad died, and finding that toy would help the boy sleep better at night. This is the “unfinished business” idea of modern ghost stories, one that Ghost Town gently turns on its ear by asking who, precisely, needs who.

What the ghosts need from Bertram is relatively mundane, but to a man who has spent many years of his life walling off others, even the smallest of kind gestures to strangers can seem alien and insurmountable. Bertram does come around eventually, of course—this is a major movie with likable stars—but Mr. Gervais (and Ms. Leoni, to some degree) add just enough gravity to give this otherwise light movie a layer of nuance.

It’s one thing for a Hollywood movie to acknowledge the very real healing power of opening yourself up to others. It’s quite another for that same movie to do so with a character who is so perfectly imperfect.

3