Ghost Town: Critic Reviews

Ghost Town is diverting enough, but it's also the kind of high-concept studio concoction Ricky Gervais might have ridiculed in his great backstage-showbiz sitcom Extras.

The sharp comic timing and the offbeat chemistry of Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear and TA (C)a Leoni keep Ghost Town afloat.

Ricky Gervais has carried off a proper, big Hollywood film; he may not be a natural, but he's done it without any hesitation or cultural cringe or apologetic foregrounding of his Britishness. He's cracked it.

Sure, it's a light comedy, but it effectively achieves what it sets out to do: amuse us and tug on our heartstrings. And best of all, it's written, directed and acted with intelligence and wit.

The best part of the movie is watching Gervais and Leoni delight in each other in scenes that burst with spontaneity and genuine warmth.

Someone once said about W.C. Fields that he had the rare ability to despise amusingly. I can imagine no greater compliment than to say that Ricky Gervais seems, at his best, like a young Fields.

It takes a good while for Ricky Gervais to warm up in Ghost Town; it takes even longer for the audience to warm up to Ricky Gervais.

Leave it to the unfailingly brilliant Gervais to breathe new life into an expiring genre.

It's enlivened by the performance of Ricky Gervais as Bertram Pincus, a latter-day Scrooge for whom the living are no less annoying than the dead.

With lesser talent in front of the camera or a heavier hand behind it, the film might have crashed with a thud.

As Ghost Town reminds us, there's nothing wrong with formula filmmaking - as long as it's done with smarts and style. Indeed, formulaic doesn't have to be shorthand for lazy, obvious and uninspired.

It's not just that Gervais isn't your typical leading guy. He's not, and bravo. It's more that Koepp and Gervais hold tight to Bertram's unpleasantness and human clumsiness after most other films would have winked at their intentions.

Who knew that Ricky Gervais could play such a likable leading man?

Gervais, a British actor whose work on television is legion, has at last found a leading role in a feature, and it's a good one.

In this comedy by David Koepp, Gervais handles the big, crowd-pleasing gags with aplomb, though the only scenes that approach the edgy wit of his TV work are those he shares with fellow improvisers Aasif Mandvi and Kristen Wiig.

Ostensibly a comedy, but one in which the (normally) brilliantly funny Ricky Gervais is more dull than he is droll, Ghost Town takes a familiar formula and goes nowhere with it.

It makes good on the cliche 'it'll make you laugh; it'll make you cry' by providing clever comedy and stock sentimentality without feeling tired.

A friendly little piffle of a movie, Ghost Town nevertheless serves as a fine and funny introduction to Ricky Gervais for American audiences.

Ricky Gervais is a genius.

Smartly supernatural, and featuring sensational performances by Ricky Gervais and Tea Leoni, Ghost Town is a Topper for our times.

Although ghost hijinks are a very Hollywood way of dealing with the subject, the twists are executed superbly, right up to a climax that fits the David Mamet definition of what makes for a perfect ending: It is both surprising and inevitable.

The terrific thing in this romantic comedy is the way Hollywood's best and brightest lift their games to match the formidable Gervais in witty exchanges.

Through it all there always shone this subtle, gleeful naughty schoolboy charm, not quite a full-on wink at the audience, but a tacit acknowledgement that sometimes even total jerks can exhibit an endearing charm.

An innovative romantic comedy that is a mixture of British spice and American sugar.