If The Sixth Sense was a comedy, where the long forgotten child star was replaced by British funny-man Ricky Gervais, it would then be Ghost Town. Dr. Bertram Pincus (Gervais), a miserable New York dentist with a grudge against humanity, suddenly starts to see dead people after a surgical mishap had him legally pronounced dead for several minutes. As he does with the living, Bertram finds the departed needy and annoying, especially a dead Greg Kinnear who believes that he can finally move on if he can get Bertram to break up his wife Gwen (Téa Leoni) and her new boyfriend.  Yet the Doc ultimately develops a sweet tooth for Gwen, the treatment of which is nothing short of a Hollywood cliché.

For a man who made a career out of being the most irritating boss possible in the British sitcom The Office, there’s a satisfying sense of payback seeing Ricky Gervais being annoyed in Ghost Town. Fans of Gervais will be happy to know that the dry humour and bluntness of his TV personas, most notably Andy Millman from Extras, is ever present in his performance here.  Bertram Pincus was obviously written with Gervais in mind, the script playing to his strengths, yet it tends to rely on his deadpan delivery to keep the comedy alive.

The characters portrayed by Kinnear and Leoni seem to only exist to feed Gervais’ comedy, which limits the film’s appeal considering it’s a type of humour that won’t suit everyone. Perhaps the best comic performance in support comes from Kristen Wiig as Bertram’s surgeon who, in the film’s most hilarious scene, matches Gervais’ comic delivery when dodging questions regarding what went wrong during surgery. Unfortunately though, these laugh-out-loud moments are few and far between.

Gervais should return to his strengths writing for himself in British productions, something that can certainly be said for Simon Pegg’s recent foray into commercial cinema (such as the forgettable How To Lose Friends And Alienate People). Hollywood has a habit of misusing or limiting the talent of British comedians, and while Ghost Town does have its moments, it’s a good example of a film that does exactly that.

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