GHOST TOWN - Blu-ray review

"Everybody dies."

"Ghost Town," the 2008 romantic comedy-fantasy from DreamWorks, marked the first big-screen lead appearance by British comic Ricky Gervais, the part-time writer, producer, director, and star of the hit BBC TV series "The Office." "Ghost Town" should have cemented his fame with American audiences, but the film did only marginal business, an unfortunate circumstance that perhaps its release on disc can put to rights. Much of the film is pretty sweet and pretty funny.

Gervais plays a Scrooge-like New York City dentist, Bertram Pinchus, a thoroughly unpleasant loner who dislikes people in general, and that includes his patients and his office associate, Dr. Prashar (Aasif Mandvi). Pinchus is not a people person and avoids them at all costs, a rather peculiar trait for someone who must deal with the public every day. Mind you, Pinchus is not purposely rude; it's just his nature, and he can't seem to change.

All is going unwell for him, which seems to please him in some perverse way, when he enters the hospital for a colonoscopy, an examination of his bowels (an oblique reference, no doubt, to his being an a..hole), and he has a near-death experience. He literally dies for about seven minutes. The next day, when he comes out of it, he sees ghosts.

The thing is, nobody else can see the ghosts but him, so it delights them to find someone who can see and hear them, and they all want something from him. For Pinchus, this is the worst thing that could happen to him. It's bad enough he hates live people; now he can't even get away from them when they're dead!

Apparently, there are ghosts all around us, most of them hanging about for unfinished business, and they want Pinchus to help finish it for them; but Pinchus will have none of it. Until he meets Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), a recently deceased businessman who promises he'll get rid of the rest of the ghosts if Pinchus will do him a favor. Frank's widow, Gwen (Tea Leoni), is about to get remarried, and he wants Pinchus to break it up. Pinchus agrees, planning to do so by pretending to woo Gwen away from the fiancée. Little does Pinchus realize that love has a curious way of creeping into the most hardened souls.

It's a cute idea for a romantic comedy. You have to have a unique angle in romantic comedies or they don't work, so the ghost thing, as in "Topper," with Frank hanging around on Pinchus's shoulder, is effectively intriguing.

More important, Gervais pulls off the lead role with a unique self-assurance. To begin with, he is about the exact opposite of a romantic lead as one could imagine. He's short, middle-aged, and ordinary in appearance, not the handsome young leading man we've come to expect in these sorts of movies. In addition, Gervais is more direct in his manner than most actors would be, never forcing his lines or looking consciously for a laugh. His humor is dry, understated, yet caustic. For the first half of the movie it's hard for the viewer to know whether to root for him or hope he fails miserably in his quasi-romantic quest. But it's to Gervais's credit that we wind up hoping the best for his character and cheering him on.

Kinnear, on the other hand, is his usual charming, casual, boyishly nice-guy self, even though he's playing an obnoxious, philandering jerk. It's a contradiction that Kinnear handles well enough for us to forget about after the first few minutes of his appearance on screen. And am I the only person in the world who thinks that Tea Leoni and Marisa Tomei are the same person? I find them both delightful in everything they do, with Ms. Leoni here pulling off the part of a somewhat guileless archaeologist rather adeptly. I might add I also found Aasif Mandvi's part as the fellow dentist quite touching (although Pinchus's racist attitudes toward him are incomprehensible, even for a comedy-fantasy). In any case, the acting works out well all the way around.

Add to the mix a script co-written and directed by David Koepp that operates in a remarkably restrained manner, and you get a surprise winner. I should also mention that Koepp directed "Stir of Echoes" and "Secret Window" and co-wrote "Spider-Man," "Mission Impossible," and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which makes the present film, so different from those, all the more astonishing.

Like all good romantic comedies, "Ghost Town" is sweet and affecting as well as gently humorous. Gervais makes an uncommonly pleasing impression as the dyed-in-the-wool grump, creating a character at once offensive yet sympathetic.

And who can resist a winning moral lesson: People, living and dead, have to find their way home. Can't beat that.

Video:
In Blu-ray high definition, the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen picture shows up clearly and brightly using an MPEG-4/AVC transfer on a dual-layer BD50. Here, you'll find deep black levels and rich, cushy colors throughout, maybe brighter, glossier, and glassier than real life but appropriate to a comedy. However, you'll also find that faces can range from rather dark to yellowish to perfectly natural, sometimes within the same shot, a somewhat disconcerting oddity.

Audio:
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio delivers a fairly wide, smooth front-channel stereo spread, even if there isn't much surround activity involved. A few of the musical background numbers show off the soundtrack's bass and dynamics, and occasionally you'll hear some environmental city noises, but it doesn't amount to much. As one might expect, this is a dialogue-driven story, so the center channel gets a workout.

Extras:
Like most discs these days, this one contains an audio commentary by the movie's director, David Koepp, and star, Ricky Gervais. They keep their comments lively, ironic, informative, and humorous. After that are three featurettes in high definition. The first, "Making Ghost Town," is a standard behind-the-scenes affair lasting about twenty-three minutes. The second, "Ghostly Effects," is a standard CGI affair, lasting about two minutes. The third, "Some People Can Do It," is essentially a six-minute gag reel, with outtakes of Gervais cracking up and giggling during shooting.

Things wrap up with twelve scene selections and bookmarks; pop-up menus; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
I appreciate that Paramount/DreamWorks are using BD50s and lossless audio on most all of their newest Blu-ray releases, big and small. It displays the promise of the high-definition disc format to its best advantage and shows that the studio is making a serious commitment to its future.

As for "Ghost Town," the most obvious comparison would be the 1990 hit "Ghost" with Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Swayze, and Demi Moore. Like its more celebrated predecessor, "Ghost Town" combines fantasy, comedy, and romance in equal measure, although the newer film has the edgier tone. Also like "Ghost," "Ghost Town" ends on a sentimental yet wholly uplifting note, which in itself is probably enough to warrant a look. I enjoyed the film quite a lot more than I thought I would.

Footnote: After watching the movie and writing up my initial standard-def review, I read an interview with Gervais in which he says that the studio offered the role of the antisocial dentist to at least four other actors who passed on it: Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, and Jack Black. I dunno; every actor brings something unique to a part, and I'm sure any one of them would have been fine. Yet it's always fun to speculate. It seems to me that Carell might have been a bit too congenial in the role; Ferrell might have been too madly frustrated; and Stiller and Black might have seemed too frenetically over the edge. All things considered, Gervais's subdued, low-key, unforced humor seems perfect for the job. In the end, serendipity prevails.

"Oh, my god, is he dead?"
"He ain't happy."