Directed by David Koepp. Starring Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Téa Leoni, Kristen Wiig, Billy Campbell 12A cert, gen release, 102 min
HAVING MADE his name playing the hopelessly self-absorbed David Brent in The Office, Ricky Gervais must have seemed like perfect casting as anti-social curmudgeon Bertram Pincus in Ghost Town.However, whereas Brent was entertainingly gauche and even sympathetic in an Alan Partridge kind of way, Pincus is thoroughly dislikeable from the outset.
Pincus, a Manhattan dentist, is brusquely rude to his colleagues and patients, and he spends his nights enjoying his own company in a precisely ordered apartment where he escapes from the outside world. When he undergoes a routine colonoscopy, Pincus has a near-death experience and survives with unexpected consequences. Like the boy in The Sixth Sense, he sees dead people.
Pincus becomes a magnet for the ghosts who apparently populate New York City in substantial numbers. These are troubled spirits who seek him out as a conduit to deal with the unfinished business of their lives. True to his nature, Pincus is unwilling to oblige, but he is worn down by the most persistent ghost, Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), who is even more irritating than the dentist himself.
After Herlihy is knocked down by a bus at the beginning of the movie, the soundtrack features The Beatles' I'm Looking Through You. It's indicative of the film's thin humour that that is one of the wittier gags on offer.
In the plodding plotline, Herlihy conspires with Pincus to wreck the new relationship his widow (Téa Leoni) has formed with a human rights lawyer (Billy Campbell) who, because he is so terribly serious, is treated with scorn by the film.
The ghosts of other movies ( Ghost, Scrooge, Topper, Blithe Spirit) loom heavily over this dull, flat and tedious effort. It is such formulaic fodder that it inevitably, cringe-inducingly turns all gooey and sentimental as it stumbles towards its moralising resolution.
Director David Koepp is best known for his prolific output as a screenwriter for other directors, including Spider-Man, Panic Room, Carlito's Wayand five films for Steven Spielberg, including the latest Indiana Jones romp. Unfortunately, Ghost Town follows in that unremarkable line of movies (including Stir of Echoesand Secret Window) that Koepp has written for himself to direct.
