Review

While screenwriter David Koepp has built a solid reputation as a reliabe hitmaker (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man), he has built an equally solid reputation as a director who consistently fails to live up to his ideas (The Trigger Effect, Secret Window). Even while demonstrating a rarely-seen lighter side in Ghost Town, this film winds up as weak-kneed and cliched as any other middle-of-the-road romantic comedy.

At least he had the good sense to cast three fascinating leads, even if they don't belong all in the same movie. Greg Kinnear plays the straight man, or straight ghost at least, wandering the Earth in a sort of high-concept purgatory. After a near-death experience, the insufferably antisocial dentist played by Ricky Gervais finds (much to his chagrin) that he can see these ghosts, all of whom seem to want something. Kinnear wants him to stop the pending marriage of his ex-wife (Téa Leoni), leading to the usual romantic comedy complications, of course.

Yes, you'd think that with all this fantasy floating about, that it would be used for more than setting up a series of misunderstandings and betrayals that ultimately lead to some sort of offbeat fuzzy ending. With those expectations now dashed, however, Ghost Town at least reveals itself to be an amiable timewaster. It's always a pleasure to see Leoni let loose in a screwball role, displaying talents that have been on the back burner since the days of Flirting with Disaster and "The Naked Truth." And it's oddly rewarding to see Gervais start out in his sardonic "Extras" mode and wind up believably warm and cuddly. The two together, of course, are severely lacking in chemistry, and Kinnear's usual ironic detachment isn't helped by his physical detachment to the other characters. And while I won't spoil Kristen Wiig's part, which seems to have been lifted out of a whole other universe, I will plead for her to leave the stagnant SNL and become a big-screen star like she deserves.

 -- David Gorgos