Cast lift 'Ghost Town' above the norm

Director: David Koepp

Cast: Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni

Gervais shines in this highly inventive and wholly original romantic comedy.

He plays Bertram Pincus, a grumpy Manhattan dentist who is brought back from the dead … with a lot of new and bothersome friends.

One of his ghostly companions is Frank (Kinnear) who keeps pestering him to wreck the coming marriage of his widow Gwen (Leoni).

Bertram, of course, finds himself falling in love with the lady himself … leading to complications.

If the storyline, though strongly developed, does run along conventional, and necessary, ghost-romance-comedy lines Koepp still finds touches of wonderful originality to garnish the treat.

And in the three major stars the film has a down-to-earth strength that is consistently appealing, especially in Gervais’s under-played performance.

Star Rating: 4/5