Review of Ghost Town (2008) by Markb. — 16 Oct 2008

Screenwriter (and sometime director) David Koepp not only makes amends for his beyond-pedestrian work on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and demonstates a comic facility that nobody would've previously credited him for, but has crafted a thoroughly charming, touching and frequently uproariously funny supernatural comedy-romance that can stand proudly with many of the classic fantasies of yesteryear, as an Ebenezer Scrooge-like misanthrope is reformed by ghosts--or, to put it another way, a Tin Man gets a heart.

British character comic Ricky Gervais is an acquired taste I haven't acquired until now (I couldn't get through Extras, and vastly prefer Steve Carell's Americanization of The Office) but he's a real treat to watch her as the world's meanest (and most miserable) man, a loner who dislikes his fellow humans so much that he seems to have chosen the profession of dentistry for the express purpose of getting paid to make them squirm and suffer.

The movie's opening half hour (during which Koepp displays a peculiar but real talent for transforming inanimate objects into hilarious supporting players) in which Gervais temporarily dies on the operating table during minor surgery, an event that enables him to see and communicate with dead people, comprises the most consistently amusing 30 minutes seen onscreen this year, with special props going to Kirsten Wiig, who plays an overly lawsuit-conscious doctor/ hospital administrator and who -- here as in last year's Knocked Up -- manages to make sheer, aself-serving duplicity seem almost adorable.

And speaking of huggable actresses, Tea Leoni, playing a winsome, soon-to-be-married archaeologist whose dead husband (Greg Kinnear at his caddish best) employs Gervais to break up the engagement, is as usual wonderfully natural and appealing.

A modern-day Carole Lombard equivalent, Leoni may not be able to buy a box office hit with someone else's money, but like Lombard she unerringly blends razor-sharp comic timing with effortless on-screen warmth; she's simultaneously glamorous and down to earth.

(In 2004 Leoni delivered what was perhaps the decade's most underrated comic performance; many viewers and critics hated her as Adam Sandler's perpetually driven, insecure high-maintenance wife in James L.

Brooks' Spanglish, but I spent most of the picture wanting to put my arm around her and tell her that everything would turn out OK and that she didn't have to try so darn hard.) The best movies of ANY genre, including the least strictly realistic ones (horror, SF, fantasy--and romantic comedies) almost unanimously display or reveal truthful insights about human nature, and one of the elements that makes Ghost Town so special is that Leoni's intended is not at all a bad guy or a buffoon, but the movie knows that in choosing him, Leoni is overcompensating for what a heel Kinnear was, but that to be truly happy Leoni needs a good person who's also a lot of fun to be with, and shouldn't have to choose between one or the other.

If Ghost Town has any flaws at all, it's that it focuses on its central quadrangle -- compelling as it is -- at the expense of the OTHER ghosts' needs, which in some cases are even more vital (the stuffed squirrel scene late in the picture is not only incredibly moving, but yields some truly stunning character revelations).