Ghost Town Review

I like Ricky Garvais' comedy, but his main shtick relies on making everyone around him uncomfortable by saying things that reveal how uncomfortable he is, which can be funny because he keeps talking and therefore gets more and more uncomfortable, which makes the people around him more and more uncomfortable... including the audience, if you don't find that sort of thing funny.

Ricky plays a dentist who lives his life as agoraphobically as he possibly can. His trip home from work, to the building next door, has far too much human interaction for his liking and he does everything in his power to discourage it. There are times where this works to comic effect, but sometimes it just points out what a jerk he is. Through happenstance he suddenly acquires the ability to see ghosts walking around the city, who are quite anxious to talk to somebody who can see and hear them. Unfortunately, the movie then follows a cookie-cutter formula and offers no surprises or interesting story elements from that point on.

One ghost, played by Greg Kinnear, manages to capture his attention and convinces Ricky to help him clear up his unfinished business so he can move on to the afterlife. Ricky reluctantly agrees, but it turns out that the unfinished business is to interfere in the love life of Greg's widow, Tea Leoni. Ricky and Tea share great chemistry, and it is always charming to watch any romance develop, particularly with such hilarious comic lines being thrown back and forth. Unfortunately, every "I see dead people" trope gets trotted out, and while the "I'm talking to someone only I can see" routine is attempted for comedic effect, it is such a Hollywood stereotype that those scenes merely come off as embarrassing - not for the characters, but for the actors. As the movie progresses, Ricky is forced to examine his feelings and his humanity, and while he's a good enough actor to pull that off, the audience already knew exactly what was going to happen long before he did.