GHOST TOWN is a charming romantic comedy.
I hope its makers gave M. Night Shyamalan a cut of the proceeds, because it unapologetically rips off THE SIXTH SENSE. Ricky Gervais plays a misanthrope who wakes up from surgery to find that he can see dead people. One of the dead people, Greg Kinnear, needs the misanthrope’s reluctant help in protecting his former wife from marrying some Baxter, and away we go.
I laughed. I cried. But I’m an easy laugh and an easy cry, so that’s not very interesting. What is interesting are Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear, who are fantastic in this picture. GHOST TOWN hands them the same challenge: create characters who are basically pricks, but make them sufficiently likeable so the audience will care long enough to watch them change. I’m not sure how they do it, but they do. It’s marvelous stuff, and great fun to watch.
Technically, the film looks blandly fine. It’s glossy, slick, and professional: standard, high quality, Hollywood fare. Toss in a few glamour shots of Manhattan’s fall foliage and a couple of time lapses of the city lighting up and darkening down to spice things up, and you have a nice presentation of a funny, effective film.
Will GHOST TOWN change your life? Absolutely not. But it does what it sets out to do and does it well. You could do worse.
