Ricky Gervais in a romantic comedy? Ok, I'll admit I had some serious doubts about Ghost Town, but goddamit, this was a great romantic comedy. Not too saccharine, full of acerbic wit and most definitely a trigger for tons of out loud laughs.
Gervais plays Bertram Pincus, D.D.S., a misanthropic dentist who minimizes his disdain for human conversation by limiting most of his interactions with others to patients whose prattling he can silence with ample helpings of cotton gauze and sterilized instruments.
He is caustic, awkward and delivers a restrained yet entirely cringe worthy performance as he dodges human contact of any kind. However, after a simple operation, he finds himself surrounded by ghosts, visible and audible only to him. After some digging he realizes his harebrained doctor (the always hilarious Kristen Wiig) accidentally killed him on the operating table. And yes, he can now see dead people.
The restless spirits flock to him and to his horror want him to help close the books on their lives and let them leave their ghostly wanderings. Chief amongst these is Frank Herlihy (a pleasingly sleazy Greg Kinnear), a cheating husband who was killed the very day his Egyptologist wife Gwen (Téa Leoni) discovered his disloyal ways. Herlihy clutches last seasons Blackberry as he berates and bargains with Pincus to help him finish things off, most importantly foiling Gwen's engagement to a do-gooder human rights lawyer. A deal is struck and it is decided that Pincus, who lives in Gwen's building, should charm her away from the lawyer. Of course, she already hates him because he is such a miserable little man.
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