3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and too harshly, for sexual candor, brief profanity and fleeting drug references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.19.08
Buy DVD: Ghost Town
• Buy Blu-Ray: Ghost Town [Blu-ray]
Director/co-scripter David Koepp's clever and witty screenplay has much to do with the success of Ghost Town, but the film belongs to Ricky Gervais.
The popular British actor/comic, well known for the TV shows The Office
and Extras
, makes a smashing leap to big-screen stardom in a role perfectly suited to his talents. As dentist Bertram Pincus, Gervais displays a hilariously misanthropic streak that's softened just enough by the woebegone face of a lonely dog abandoned by its beloved master.  |
| After a hospital "incident" leaves dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) with the ability to see and communicate with the deceased, he's besieged by phantoms who beg him to help complete final tasks that will allow them to escape their Earthly purgatory. |
Pincus has no use for people, not even his clinic partner or the many patients who settle nervously into his chair. They're all talkers, and he derives far too much satisfaction from silencing the chatter with cotton plugs, gunk-laden impression trays or enthusiastic applications of Novocain.
If requested to hold the elevator where he resides in a tony Manhattan flat, he'll pretend to do so while stealthily stabbing the "close" button, then displaying a faux apologetic expression as the doors close on an exasperated neighbor.
In short, Pincus is an unredeemable cad, but in a fussy, Felix Unger manner that makes him somehow endearing.
Because we know the truth, and that's the beauty of Gervais' performance: Despite his snarky behavior, Pincus is a man in desperate pain, and one who needs to see the light.
Instead, he sees ghosts.
A routine colonoscopy is punctuated by an "incident" with the general anesthesia that leaves Pincus clinically dead for seven minutes; his subsequent discovery of this catastrophe emerges during a conversation with his surgeon and the hospital's legal watchdog. The start-stop hiccups of this "chat" are to die for: perfectly timed by all three actors, and marvelously choreographed by Koepp.
And certain to be appreciated by any viewer who ever tried to extract candor from a doctor conditioned by lawyers to say nothing.
The upshot, before Pincus can mutter "I see dead people," is precisely that: He's left with the ability to interact with the multitude of ghosts crowding the streets of New York. This isn't the slightest bit scary, merely annoying ... because all these shades, by definition, are stuck in their Earth-bound purgatory until they're able to complete some unfinished business.
Suddenly this dentist, who wants nothing to do with anybody, is the only hope for a legion of frustrated and dispirited spirits.
Sheer genius.
