Ghost Town (2008)

A Film By David Koepp The Talent Neutralizer

Before we go into the latest film that was privileged to star Ricky Gervais in it (of which there are only a handful), let's pause for a moment to pay our respects to the career of writer/director David Koepp, who has been ruining, with mesmerizing skill and determination, a high variety of promising projects for a couple of years now. I am aware that he co-wrote Jurassic Park, which happens to be one of my favorite films, but I have strong faith in Michael Crichton's positive influence in that one. Carlito's Way was good enough but after that came a number of other utterly unremarkable projects (which include but are not limited to The Trigger Effect, The Paper and The Shadow). He joined forces with Brian de Palma and Mission: Impossible became his first film to have posters where the name 'Tom Cruise' would be advertised in bigger fonts than the actual title of the film. This was closely followed by a second round with Steven Spielberg for a Jurassic Park sequel. I would have a couple of mean things to say about these two films, but I will save my breath for the really catastrophic part.

This brings me to David Fincher, whom I have always thought of as an extremely talented director. He does wonders as long as he does not team up with a guy who insists on telling the story of Forrest Gump over and over again; or with a guy who, in the best case scenario, will have hard time going beyond the ordinary. Thanks to the latter, an A-list director who had films like Fight Club, Se7en and The Game to his name until then, became responsible from something like Panic Room.

Koepp then found someone very much like himself in the talent department and adapted Spider-Man, which was a huge commercial success and did considerably good with critics. I didn't think it was a particularly bad film as well - it was nice in a TV movie sort of way. You know, the ones you forget after approximately a couple of minutes after watching. Not more than two years after that something incomprehensible happened and a project with the names Johnny Depp, John Turturro and Stephen King attached to it turned out to be even worse than Spidey. Before we could think what went wrong where, Steven Spielberg realized -in the hard way- that third time was not really a charm; Koepp wrote arguably his worst film that is known to mankind today and needless to say, it was a traumatic experience for everyone. For some reason though, Spielberg persisted the cooperation (because of box office numbers maybe?) until this time he ruined a whole franchise that had been sweeping a whole generation for years; alienating fan base so hardcore that until then was believed to have been impossible to turn away.

And now he takes one of the world's most beloved comedians and reduces him to Hugh Grant. In my book, that's a dead-serious atrocity.

Yes, I do believe that Ricky Gervais is one of the most talented of his generation. He is a real comedic genius and terrific performer; his collection of stand-ups (i.e. Animals, Politics and Fame) is a must-see, but the real extent of his talent is quantified by The Office (British version, obviously), Extras and his short, mostly-improvised gigs in the awards ceremonies. I loved his cameo-like appearance in Stardust and seeing him act against Robert de Niro was like a dream come true. That's why I was quite excited to see Ghost Town where he got to play a comedic lead, even though the whole thing looked like just another reprehensible romantic comedy.

With Koepp, I should've known better.

This is basically the story of a man who, after a bizarre set of events, is able to see dead people but more importantly, they are able to see that he sees them; the dead people in this case being the ones whose death left an unfinished business behind. And as semi-ghosts tend to do in cases like this, everybody has a small request from him so that they will be done with all the earthly matters and their souls will find eternal peace. Bertram Pincus (played by Gervais) though is a bitter asshole who couldn't care less. That is, until he strikes a deal with Frank (played by Greg Kinnear) who is good at convincing people to do things because that used to be his job before he kicked the bucket. The rules of the game are clear: Pincus will help Frank with his unfinished business and in exchange, Frank will convince everybody else to leave Pincus alone.

The rest is a melodramatic story of personal awakenings and -as always- the real meaning of life, spiced up with occasional funny moments. It is Sixth Sense and Ghost cooked in the same pot and finished with a heavy cream of romantic comedy conventions. I will not go so far as to say that Ghost Town is not enjoyable; it definitely has its moments and depending on how much you can tolerate movie cliches, you might even find it satisfying as a whole. As for me, I am used to watching trite films and not caring about them, even to write a review; but in this case my pain is to see Ricky Gervais being wasted in one of them.

5/10