So Scary It'll Make Your Eye Pop!!! Ghost Town Dvd for Halloween--Three Days till La Veille De La Tous-saint



Dead For 7 Minutes. A Bit Less.

 I had just finished watching a film on a flight (Wall-E) on a return flight to New York. It wasn't a great film to see on a tiny screen on the back of an airline seat. Unexpectedly, another film came on shortly afterward, a film that I had remembered being in theaters but had not given a second glance. At first I watched distractedly, but within 15 minutes I was completely into the movie. Ghost Town. Unfortunately the plane landed as the movie ended and I missed the last minute of the film. The following week I rented it and saw the flick in its entirety.

I didn't know what to make of the movie at first. It seemed like one of those novelty comedies where people switch bodies or meet eccentric aliens. But it was far too well constructed and the plot too clever to be just something to do on a Saturday. This was a real comedy like A Fish Called Wanda, or Arthur, or the wacky comedies of the 1930's. Not a bunch of comedians ad libbing, and no reliance on profanity and gross-out humor. Surprise, Surprise! An intelligent adult romantic comedy that is actually funny and moving, with some valuable life lessons thrown in. Ghost Town was directed with panache by David Koepp, who also has an impressive resume as a screenwriter including films such as Jurassic Park and Angels and Demons.

Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais, star of the original Office series on BBC TV. He portrays an English dentist, Bertram Pincus, who is a resident of New York City. He lives an isolated existence, getting up, going to work, returning home. He is a curmudgeon, a smart person who refuses to tolerate stupidity, and treats people around him with ridicule and condescension. He lives life in a monotonous routine, days unassumingly blending into one another.

His unchanging routine is upended when he needs to undergo minor surgery. He endures a litany of frustrations on the way to his procedure, where Gervais is at his best, humorously skewing human nature and the foible of modern society. Of note is his argumentative conversation with the nurse at the hospital admittance desk, and his eyepopping encounter with a self-absorbed physician played by Kristen Wiig of SNL. But things change dramatically after the surgery. Bertram's story takes on supernatural dimensions...

After leaving the hospital he begins to have encounters with people who are not really there. They are ghosts wandering the streets of New York. And they soon realize that he can see them, unlike the other living people. Pincus thinks he is hallucinating and returns the next day to the hospital. He finds out that he died briefly on the operating table as a result of the anaesthesia. His near demise has him situated between two worlds, and the spirits of the departed won't leave him alone. They are here on earth because they have unfinished business, and they are hounding the poor dentist to intervene on their behalf.

Finally, one particularly pushy ghost in a tuxedo pressures Pincus into making a deal with him. Greg Kinnear plays Frank Herlihy, an aggressive businessman who persuades Pincus to agree to try to break up his wife Gwen's (Tea Leoni) pending engagement, as he believes her fiancee to be a bad person. Complications arise because Gwen lives in the same apartment complex, and Pincus being Pincus, has treated her with his trademark rudeness. Kinnear and Gervais make for an unlikely team, a brash aggressive ghost and a sharp witted but introverted dentist, which also becomes a marriage of convenience for Pincus as he becomes infatuated with Gwen. Pincus detests Frank, and argues with him a lot.

In a lot of ways the movie is like Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Pincus is an emotional Scrooge. Intellectually he thinks he acts the way he does because he is superior to all the idiots around him. In reality, it is a defense mechanism. He is an emotionally scarred person who uses his indifference and acid humor to push people away before they can harm him. And it is the intervention of these ghosts that set him on a new course toward personal redemption. He is suddenly forced to act and interact, and the nice guy under all the layers of armor is slowly revealed.

But this Pincus is like a W.C. Fields at first doesn't like kids, treats Dr. Prashar (Aasif Mandvi) in his office brusquely and has bothered to learn so little about him that he is a virtual stranger. He treats his doorman and even the posse of ghosts surrounding him at all hours with unflinching thoughtless indifference. Once he accepts that ghosts are talking to him he just gets on with it. Gwen Herlihy, on the other hand,  is a beautiful intelligent headstrong woman, and he has to relearn his social skills and be charming and considerate. His supernatural mentor knows Gwen well though, and offers him insider information and blunt advice, with mixed and often funny results. Gwen's fiancee (Billy Campbell) is a man who would get a grade of 100 on a woman's checklist of qualities, and is a dramatic contrast to Gervais' regular guy appearance. You sympathize with Gervais' mismatched competition for her affections.

This Is How We Do It, Baby

Another important characteristic of this movie is the cinematography. This is very much a movie about New York--the City itself is one of the actors. It is a film set in Autumn, with leaves falling, rain falling, dark skies and full moons, Central Park. This is a also an ultimate Dentist movie, a Desert Island Dental disc, on a par with The In-Laws, Little Shop of Horrors, Marathon Man, and Tim Burton's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Though Autumn is the perfect time of the year for Ghost Town, I would recommend this movie any time it hurts when you smile.