DVD Corner - GHOST TOWN

And because I don't just watch movies when they come out (although I do see a lot of them then), today we've got a film I watched at home.

HAUNTED BY SPOILERS BELOW


















GHOST TOWN was a big studio feature, written by David Koepp and John Kamps, directed by Koepp, and starring Ricky Gervais. It tells the story of a jerky dentist who values his privacy and, after a near-death experience, sees ghosts who want his help in order to resolve their unfinished business. This bristles against his desire to protect his alone time, particularly because pushy ghost Greg Kinnear won't leave him alone until he helps break up the marriage of his widow to a human rights lawyer.

Koepp has written some truly amazing scripts, including the first Spider-Man movie. And he and Kamps have done good work together as well. At the end of the day, though, this feels oddly more like an indie film than a major studio release. There's some great character work, and the plot of the story flows naturally out of Gervais' intense desire from privacy and how that conflicts with Kinnear's plan to screw up his wife's impending marriage. And also how Gervais has to deal with the widow (Tea Leoni), particularly after being rude to her in the past. However, the very execution of the script in a way feels like the smallest possible version of the story and slightly a failure of imagination. It reminded me in many ways about BRUCE ALMIGHTY, and how the writers hit on a brilliant premise (regular guy gets to be God for a while), but instead of doing something big with it, they limited to having a newscaster try to win his job and girl back. There was a much better, bigger version of that idea instead of the one they made.

Now this is a much better written, acted, and directed film than that. It just feels...small, I guess is the right way to describe it. A guy finds out he can talk to ghosts and instead of going down several wrong paths with it (using their knowledge for some sort of personal gain, like investing in the stock market, stealing stuff by supernaturally knowing the combination to a safe or an alarm code or where the keys are kept, or wooing a woman using inside info a la GROUNDHOG DAY) and then finally using it for right, our hero just avoids dealing with it altogether. And while that's a choice and an action on his part, it's kind of a boring one. Even when he finally decides to help the ghosts, almost all of their problems are small too and easily solvable -- showing a woman where a formerly hidden letter from her dead mother was; showing a truck driver an accident wasn't his fault by pointing out some damage on his truck; finding a child's doll under a car seat; even wrapping up Tea Leoni and Greg Kinnear's problem is solvable in about three minutes of screentime.

To Koeep and Kamps' credit, I liked Gervais despite his jerkiness, a credit to the writing (and Gervais' acting). And I got emotionally involved in his journey from jerk to nice guy. I just can't help feeling like the film would've worked better if the main character was more active, more involved, and the overall story was bigger. That's part of the reason GROUNDHOG DAY works so brilliantly; even though it's a contained story in a small town, it feels like the movie fully explores what someone would do if he found himself death-proof and waking up in the same day over and over again.