Ghost Town - B

In theaters. Rated PG-13, 101 minutes. Trailer.

Ricky Gervais is the funniest man alive right now, period. Ghost Town is his first lead role in a movie (he has had small turns in For Your Consideration, Night at the Museum and Stardust), and the result is a mixed bag. Ostensibly a comedy, this film is a mash-up of A Christmas Carol, Its a Wonderful Life, Ghost Dad, and The Invisible Man with a little of 'The Office' thrown in for good measure. Ricky is Bertram Pincus, a misanthropic dentist living a solitary, insulated life in Manhattan. Click below for more on a schizophrenic movie:

After he goes in for a routine colonoscopy during which he dies for 7 minutes, he is able to see ghosts around Manhattan, all of whom are stuck in limbo until they can take care of their particular unfinished business. Bertram deals mostly with Greg Kinnear's ghost character, Frank, as he tries to get Bertram to end Frank's widow's (Tea Leoni as Gwen) new engagement. Bertram agrees to help only to keep the other limbo ghosts from bothering him. Of course, he falls in love with Gwen along the way and also learns that being an a-hole is bad and he should care about people.

That's a lot of ground to cover in 101 minutes, and writer/director David Koepp isn't able to keep all of that together. The trailer portends a rioutous comedy; it is funny in spots (it has to be with Gervais), but it isn't as funny as anything Gervais has done to this point. The film takes aim at the curmudgeon, and hits a little close to home. The mushy conclusion where Pincus redeems himself is effectively executed, but I couldn't get over the contrived nature of the story arc. The movie is just weird...is it a comedy, a Capra film, or a romantic comedy? I don't care if a movie defies category, but those genres are hard to mix with success.

Kinnear is fine as Frank, as is Leoni as Gwen. A particular complaint is the multiple stupid scenes with Kristen Wiig as a surgeon. The film is realistic (except for the ghosts, I know) all around, but then they have an over the top ridiculous medical scene and disclosure of surgery problems that isn't really funny and ruins the tone of the film.

Seeing Gervais working with lesser material is odd. Hopefully that will be rectified with the forthcoming This Side of the Truth, which is written and directed by Gervais, and starring Tina Fey, Gervais, Jeffrey Tambor, Stephen Merchant, Jonah Hill and Christopher Guest.