- Release Date: December 27th, 2008
- Publisher: Dreamworks Video
- Price: $19.99 on Amazon (Buy It)
- Rating: PG-13 (some strong language, sexual humor and drug references)
- Run Time: 102 Minutes
- Special Features: Commentary, Making Ghost Town, Some People Can Do It, Ghostly Effects
- Starring: Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni, Greg Kinnear, Billy Campbell, Kristen Wiig, Dana Ivey
- Genre: Romantic Comedy
Ghost Town was one of those films that I was thinking about seeing in theaters but I decided to wait till DVD. I personally am not a huge fan of Ricky Gervais and I thought the concept was done many times before. After seeing the film on DVD I would have to say that I made the right choice in waiting to see Ghost Town on DVD.
For those of you who haven’t seen Ghost Town, it tells the tale of Bertram Pincus (funny name by the way). Bertram has never been what you would call a people person. He would prefer to be just left alone which makes him cranky when anyone is around him. It is not so easy to be alone after he starts seeing dead people all around him. Bertram just wants them all to go away so he agrees to helps a ghost in exchange for him convincing the other ghosts to leave him alone. The ghost asks Bertram to woo his widow away from her current fiance whom the ghost thinks is bad news. While on his mission though Bertram starts developing feelings for Gwen which puts Bertram in a predicament between the living and the dead.
As you can tell from the description, Ghost Town is a romantic comedy. While I wouldn’t consider myself the biggest romantic comedy fan around, I still enjoy the genre. The problem with the genre though is that so many of the films are so similar that the genre has turned into a mass of average romantic comedies with a couple romantic comedies that truly separate themselves from the rest. While I would like to say that Ghost Town is the later, sadly it is the former.
There are two problems with Ghost Town. The first is that it really doesn’t distinguish itself for the rest of the genre. While it has the plot twist of one of the characters seeing ghosts, the twist doesn’t really distinguish the film from the many other romantic comedies out there. The second problem is that the humor is way too inconsistent. The movie has some funny points but it has just as many bad jokes.
As far as the special features are concerned here is the breakdown:
- Commentary-Your typical commentary.
- Making Ghost Town-A 23 minute making of featurette that isn’t anything special.
- Some People Can Do It-A six minute look at Ricky Gervais continually messing up scenes and breaking into laughter.
- Ghostly Effects-A two minute look at how the film made it possible for objects to pass through the ghost. With no narration or explanation, this special feature is pretty worthless.
What it basically comes down to is that Ghost Town is a pretty average romantic comedy. If you are a fan of Ricky Gervais or romantic comedies I would recommend you check out Ghost Town if you haven’t yet. If you aren’t a big fan of either though I would probably recommend that you pass on Ghost Town since there are better romantic comedies out there.
