I'm going to bring my manhood into question here and say that "Ghost Town" is a cute movie. That's the only apt definition for something that's fun to watch and mildly romantic but doesn't offer the suspense, symbolism or surprise - unless you count the joyous physical proof that Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is still around as surprising - the general population uses to classify a movie as good. But it's a nice movie and worth going to see if you're in the mood for something light.
The plot of the movie is as if Charles Dickens' Scrooge character stumbled onto the set of "Ghost." Dr. Bertram Pincus, played by Ricky Gervais, is a dentist who hates other people. After a colonoscopy goes awry, he dies for seven minutes and gets the ability to communicate with ghosts, which are defined as souls stuck on earth due to some unfinished business. Upon finding out about Pincus, the ghost of Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) enlists Pincus to help stop Herlihy's widowed wife Gwen (Téa Leoni) from remarrying, which Herlihy believes to be his unfinished business. Along the way, Pincus ends up falling for Gwen and finding new purpose in life.
It's a two-hour Ricky-Gervais-does-and-says-something-awkward fest, which gets a lot of good laughs. In a Hugh Grant-esque way, Gervais manages to use his British charm to always win you back, even when he's acting like a complete jerk. Unlike Hugh Grant, he's actually funny. Beyond being funny, he brings character and reality to what is essentially a people-hating man. You'll find yourself smiling when he finally comes around and starts helping people out.
The movie's main fault is that it's truly predictable. If you've seen the preview for "Ghost Town" or any movies like it, you can pretty much map out what it's going to be like. In that sense, the movie feels really slow as you patiently wait for Ricky Gervais to reform his misguided ways. But this doesn't actually matter because movies like this are enjoyable due to their light and optimistic nature. Generally, these movies are just free of the confusion plaguing ordinary life. Isn't that basically why we watch movies anyway?
