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Friday, October 24, 2008, 07:00
Unfortunately, the award-winning star of The Office and Extras simply doesn't have the charisma to carry an entire film, falling back on his usual repertoire of comic tics and mumbled asides.
Screenwriters Koepp and John Kamps rely on Gervais's unsympathetic misanthrope for the majority of the laughs, a risk that doesn't pay off, resulting in uncomfortable longueurs when every punchline falls flat. Saturday Night Live regular Kristen Wiig is a blessed relief as a litigation-shy surgeon who tries to cover up an unfortunate turn of events on the operating table.
"You died... a little bit," she eventually confesses to Gervais's dumbfounded patient. "Everybody dies," she adds soothingly. "Yeah, usually at the end of their life," he replies, "and only the once."
There's every chance that audiences could die of boredom well before the end of Koepp's film and its emotionally-manipulative, mawkish denouement, which recalls Scrooge's transformation in A Christmas Carol. Bah humbug, indeed.
During a routine colonoscopy, middle-aged British dentist Bertram Pincus (Gervais) reacts badly to the anaesthetic. His heart stops beating, but thankfully the hospital staff revive the patient on the operating table.
Bertram wakes to discover he can now see and hear the spirits of the recently departed, all of whom are stuck in limbo.
Ghost Town could have been a quirky and charming romantic comedy with a different leading man.
Regrettably, with Gervais on board, the project becomes a limp one-man show, with hardly any room for his co-stars to breathe life into their underwritten protagonists.
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