Ghost Town Reviewed and Introducing the Romantic Comedy Watch-Abilty Scale

Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais (creator and star of the British version of the Office), Tea Leoni and Greg Kinnear. It is Gervais' first leading role in a movie and although it is nothing spectacular he does a decent job at it. It is a fairly conventional romantic comedy which usually is not my cup of tea. Get it Gervais is British... cup of tea...seriously though. Gervais plays a lonely depressed dentist who cannot stand people. He goes in for a routine colonoscopy, but requests anesthesia. I can understand the thought process, but it generally is not covered for such a procedure. Certainly this is the sort of thing one would be willing to splurge on though. After leaving the hospital he makes a comment to a nurse who is dressed up in a world war II era nurse's outfit. She is excited that he can see her and tells him so. He thinks she is crazy as she starts following him. Soon she tells others that he can see them and they begin following him. He believes that he is hallucinating so he later returns to the hospital to see if there was anything unusual about his surgery (yes a colonoscopy is considered a surgery). When he goes back to the hospital it is eventually revealed to him by his surgeon, Kristen Wiig of Saturday Night Live, that he died for seven minutes on the night of his surgery.

Having died and come back to life he is now able to see and communicate with the dead a not so well known fringe benefit of briefly dying. You think people purposely flat lined when they thought they could visit loved ones or people who passed on in some sort of netherworld as in the movie Flatliners, well imagine how common it would be if people thought they could speak to ghosts. Maybe not so common, but I imagine it would have sort of a cult following among certain people. Greg Kinnear is one of the ghosts who he communicates with and Kinnear convinces him to attempt to break up his ex-wife played by Tea Leoni from her new fiance played by Billy Campbell. Her new fiance appears to be perfect in every way, but Kinnear insists he is not. Not surprisingly Gervais soon falls for Leoni and she seems to like him as well. He makes her laugh. If you have never seen the British version of the Office or Extras and are not familiar with Gervais' somewhat unique brand of British humor it is somewhat dry. He mumbles often and with a British accent so if you are not paying attention it is easy to miss what he is saying. He is funny on occasion in this movie, but it is nothing like his character Michael Scott from the Office. Of course that is one of the best comedy series in television history so maybe that is too high a threshold to compare it to.

It reminds me of a cross between the movies Ghost and Groundhog Day. I suspect it may have originally been a bit of a satire on films such as Ghost, but it does not really go the satire route much, surprisingly. It mostly plays it straight forward.

Are you having a laugh? Well a few, but not as many as I expected. A reference from Extras for those who did not get that. On the romantic comedy watch-ability scale which I just came up with which goes from 1-10 with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Ghost gets a 1.5 and Groundhog Day gets a 10. A popular theory about romantic comedies is that the attractiveness of the female in the lead is the most important thing to get you through the movie if you are a male who was dragged kicking and screaming to the theater. As a last resort that will help a little, but if the movie is just downright crazy like Bride Wars starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway appears to be, then it does not matter how attractive the female lead is you will be miserable.

Strangely enough I will submit that the male lead is likely a better indicator of how enjoyable a romantic comedy will be for a male. Just hear me out. Groundhog Day had Bill Murray and he has the ability to lift even mediocre or bad material and make it worth watching. I'm not saying it would have been bad if he was not in it as the material was good and Harold Ramis usually does a good job. If you had replaced him with a fairly talented and likable leading man it might have been decent, but if you replaced him with Richard Gere it would have been unwatchable from a man's prospective. That said although Gervais is an extremely funny and talented man his performance does not compare to Murray in Groundhog Day nor are the movies comparable in quality. It does however compare favorably to Ghost from a man's prospective. The only redeeming scene in Ghost is when Whoopi Goldberg kisses Demi Moore. The sexual chemistry between Leoni and Gervais is only slightly better than that between Goldberg and Moore.

So all things considered it gets a six on the romantic comedy watch-ability scale. I'm sure other people have made similar scales, but I am not aware of them and I apologize in advance to anyone who came up with this idea before me. Until I can come up with a better name for this scale I will continue to call it the rc was. I am open to suggestions on a new name for this scale. No I will not rename it the bromantic comedy scale as that is dumb and if you find the word bromance or any variation of that word funny you should be embarrassed. Also if you like using the word bromance you probably do not agree with my rating of Ghost. Of course if that is the case than you do not need this scale and it was not meant for you. You should still read it and all of my other posts for educational purposes though. It is nothing personal. I am sure you a great guy and I bet some women are probably more than happy to date a eunuch who is excited to go see Bride Wars with them.

Full disclosure: I talk tough, but if a woman I liked wanted me to go see Bride Wars with her I would. After the movie I would be willing to go to Bed Bath and Beyond while she picked out bed clothes. Although tempted I would probably not make any jokes about how my clothes on the floor would really help decorate her room. Sad, but true.