Haunting You With Laughter
On DVD & Blu-ray
On DVD & Blu-ray
In what should have been the crossover romantic comedy smash that would introduce British funny man Ricky Gervais to U.S. audiences who haven't yet had the pleasure of catching him in various BBC shows such as the original version of The Office and HBO's Extras, Gervais elevates a screwball inspired romantic comedy fantasy to hilarious effect.
Now available on both DVD and Blu-ray from Paramount and DreamWorks Home Entertainment, Ghost Town is not only the sleeper comedy of the year but is ironically being released on disc during a week when I think it would've garnered a happy and willing audience ready to turn their back on both the influx of doom and gloom Oscar bait and a depressing economy.
Simply put, America is in dire need of a laugh as we learned last month when Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn stole Twilight's thunder with Four Christmases and those who move in the direction of Spiderman and Panic Room scribe David Koepp's Town will find themselves rewarded time and time again.
But, before I critique the aspects of the Blu-ray disc itself and visit the disc's Special Features, I'll serve up a second helping of my first theatrical review of the film.
Ghost Town
Director:
David Koepp
Ricky Gervais as a romantic leading man?
"Are you having a laugh?"
Surprisingly no, but Gervais makes us laugh throughout.
"Are you having a laugh?"
Surprisingly no, but Gervais makes us laugh throughout.
Several years back and shortly after the initial hedonistic pleasurable rush I felt upon the installation of our family's DirecTV wore off, I realized how very overwhelming it was to suddenly have hundreds of channels at our disposal. Whether you were into knitting or cooking or knitting while you were cooking, there seemed to be something for everyone and I distinctly remember the one fateful evening when my remote landed on the face of British comedian Ricky Gervais on BBC America. Of course, I didn't know it was Gervais at the time— I was so completely sucked into the mockumentary that was the British version of The Office, I felt that Gervais and his character, David Brent were one and the same. I set the remote down and there it stayed as I was fascinated, appalled, and utterly riveted by the absurdly hilarious utterances coming out of the mouth of Brent/Gervais.
While Garry Shandling's self-centeredness on The Larry Sanders Show fit his character's showbiz lifestyle to a "T" and Larry David's curmudgeon shtick on Curb Your Enthusiasm is the perfect extension of Seinfeld's George Costanza, there was something that hit harder about Gervais' characterization. Namely that he felt more realistic, painful, and heartrending than his overly animated American counterpart Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) on the funny but thematically different version of NBC'sThe Office. We empathize with Brent on a level we don't connect to with Scott and the brilliance of that lies in the talent of the show's co-creator and star, Ricky Gervais.
The hilarious mastermind and co-creator of not just The Office but HBO's Extras has had bit parts in American films over the past few years such as opposite Robert De Niro in Stardust and with Christopher Guest's talented improvisational crew in For Your Consideration. Yet writer/director David Koepp—the man who penned such contemporary classics as Jurassic Park, Carlito's Way, Panic Room, Mission: Impossible, and Spiderman—gave Gervais the chance to be a full-fledged leading man in this month's surprisingly freshest and most entertaining new comedy, Ghost Town.
While I'm no Miss Manners, it does seem sort of disloyal for Koepp to admit this publicly especially during the same week the film from Paramount Pictures, Dreamworks, and Spyglass Entertainment opens, but Koepp hopes that his winning performance in the film will change this reality and make Gervais not just a full-fledged leading man but a full-fledged American star. I'm predicting he's right and word-of-mouth will not only propel this film to a bigger audience with each passing week but that Gervais will also be considered in Robin Williams' company on our own soil as well. He almost certainly still has his work cut out for him. I still remember the evening of The Golden Globes a few years back when The Office won two awards and the chilly reception and deer-in-the-headlights look given to him by such A-list stars as Billy Bob Thornton as he and the cast bounded towards the stage, no doubt wondering what was with the latest British invasion. Indeed, Gervais is the reason why Ghost Town's hokey premise works and he's so completely "on" in every scene that it's a wonder any other actor could keep a straight face.
As Bertam Pincus, a misanthropic dentist who seems to have chosen his profession for its endless opportunities to force chatty patients into shutting up with various tools, plasters, and tricks of the trade, Gervais plays yet another jerk to incredible perfection. Whether he's avoiding his fellow dentist's impromptu office party by sneaking out the door or forcing the elevator doors closed when his neighbor Gwen (Tea Leoni) yells for him to hold it open, Pincus is a man without friends or conversation. He frankly prefers to keep it that way. This all changes when he goes in for a routine colonoscopy and makes the request to be completely anesthetized for the procedure.
Hospital Check-In
The Medical Staff
After he's released from the hospital a day later, he discovers that he's being followed by a large number of pushy New Yorkers with unfinished business. No, they aren't people whom he's wronged in the past, but people who find hope in Pincus due to his ability to see and converse with them as they're all, save Pincus, dead. Rushing back to the hospital to find out why he's experiencing what he fears are hallucinations, his inept surgeon (a hilarious Kristen Wiig) explains that the reason he's seeing ghosts is because, well, he actually died "for a little bit" himself.
"You Died."
Pincus' hopes of avoiding others are dashed as the films tagline promises that "he sees dead people… and they annoy him." This is especially the case when the self-centered and unofficial leader of the ghosts famous for his knack of talking people into things, Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) promises that he'll help Gervais get back to his old life if he does Herlihy one favor.
"I Need Your Help."
"New York is Lousy with Ghosts."
With his dashing classic movie star looks and easy charm, Kinnear is the natural choice for the role, playing off the wicked Gervais in the same way he interacted the misanthropic character played by the Oscar winning Jack Nicholson in Kinnear's award nominated role in As Good As It Gets. Unwilling to let Pincus off the hook, the two finally reach an arrangement to solve Frank's problem, namely that his widow Gwen (Tea Leoni) is about to marry a man whom Frank fears is no good.
Even though he shouldn't be one to talk as—upon the film's opening—we realize that Frank had been two-timing his wife with a Yoga hottie, once Pincus sees Gwen delivering a lecture on a mummy for her archaeological work, he finds himself instantly attracted. While to Frank, all Pincus needs to do is distract Gwen enough to make her have second thoughts about marrying a picture perfect human rights lawyer, Pincus takes the assignment literally, falling for the beautiful, brainy, and delightfully odd Gwen. Happily for Pincus, as evidence by her work with mummies, Gwen shares an enthusiasm for people who don't talk and also has a bizarre interest in dentistry.
Although Gwen hesitates to give him the time of day, they live in the same building and he has ignored her on numerous occasions in the past, Pincus keeps trying in one of the film's funniest scenes as he tries to engage her in conversation following her lecture. At one point his ramblings become so ridiculously hysterical, I couldn't even hear Gervais due to the audience's laughter. He and Leoni work very well-together. As I wrote about Leoni in my review of You Kill Me, her characterization here made me, "again appreciate the delightful screwball-inspired nuances that Tea Leoni always brings to her characters and wish that she was given far more cinematic opportunities." Equally adept at pratfalls as she is with verbal gymnastics and improvisations, I began to wonder how much Gervais came up with on the fly. It's a pleasure to watch, even in tiny scenes like this one.
Gwen's Dog
A bright and sophisticatedly witty romantic comedy, I'm expecting Ghost Town will be the ultimate sleeper that could, if enough people take a chance on a film with a man they don't recognize on the poster. Admittedly, while the plot setup is a bit generic and we don't really need yet another ghost movie, the three leads (not to mention the supporting players like Wiig) are all in perfect form.
Several years ago, director Brett Ratner said in a newspaper interview that he hoped his Christmas comedy The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage and Don Cheadle would help America realize what a talent Tea Leoni truly was. And while his film didn't quite reach the level that he aspired in the way that Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally launched Meg Ryan (as he is after all Ratner and not Reiner), here's to hoping Koepp's film does double duty.
Ghost Town should help reestablish the gifted comedienne Tea Leoni (who in my book often recalls Carole Lombard and Jean Arthur) and should also successfully introduce the unconverted to the comic mastermind that is Ricky Gervais… even if we're never buying the fact that he's a real life dentist with those less-than-perfect teeth. Still, who cares about teeth when it's the things coming out of his mouth that are the most memorable? So in the end, we're "having a laugh" indeed... over and over and over again.
The Blu-ray
Eager to leave the big-budget special effects films he'd worked on in the past behind him for the welcome change of pace to sit back and try to "stay out of the actors' way," writer/director David Koepp happened upon the idea for Ghost Town when he himself longed to stay out of everyone's way.
Having what he described as a really bad day on a film set, Koepp wandered around until he was struck by the sight of a wooden tooth hanging outside a building and thought how great it would be to craft a character who loves dentistry because he can shove cotton into people's mouths and avoid conversation.
In the film's entertaining twenty-two minute making-of featurette, Koepp describes his creative approach including his wish to only offer a few simple effects as opposed to the CGI prevalent in his bigger films he'd penned for directors like Spielberg. Instead, he preferred to opt for "romantic comedy effects" with entertaining new ghostly quirks such as having characters wear simply what they died in (naturally giving Kinnear a tuxedo so that he's the "host" for the film and immediately stands out) and modeling Leoni's character after Cary Grant's brainy and bright yet often distractedly dizzy Bringing Up Baby paleontologist.
Of course, the main star of the extras is Gervais who crafts a hilarious false anecdote about meeting his director for the first time and chats up the camera along with his dog Gia. And, to be expected, the other actors and Koepp describe how hard it was to keep from laughing when they shared the same scene as Gervais.
Proof of this can be found in the genuinely hysterical outtakes called "Some People Can Do It," (the second of three special features all offered in Blu-ray High Definition) as the actors crack each other up and Leoni scolds Gervais to keep filming and redo a scene when he rambles an alternate version of a line to ridiculous effect. Providing further humorous fodder-- Koepp and Gervais take part in a feature length commentary and those curious about the movie magic side of Town can take in the "Ghostly Effects" extra as well.
Crisp color and excellent flesh tones in a superb transfer with zero artifacting and Dolby TrueHD English 5.1 Surround (as well as French and Spanish Dolby Digital), Ghost Town's Blu-ray quality is another solid offering from Paramount and DreamWorks which seems to have the format down to a science. Likewise, the studios also thankfully provide subtitles in not just French, Spanish and Portuguese but English as well so that way you can read the jokes you find you've missed from laughing so much the first time around. And luckily for us, now that it's available on disc, we can replay our favorite scenes-- including the awkward romantic evening and Gervais' scenes with Wiig-- again and again, managing to go about "having a laugh" as loud as we want in the privacy of our own homes without worrying about anyone shoving cotton into our mouths.
Having what he described as a really bad day on a film set, Koepp wandered around until he was struck by the sight of a wooden tooth hanging outside a building and thought how great it would be to craft a character who loves dentistry because he can shove cotton into people's mouths and avoid conversation.
In the film's entertaining twenty-two minute making-of featurette, Koepp describes his creative approach including his wish to only offer a few simple effects as opposed to the CGI prevalent in his bigger films he'd penned for directors like Spielberg. Instead, he preferred to opt for "romantic comedy effects" with entertaining new ghostly quirks such as having characters wear simply what they died in (naturally giving Kinnear a tuxedo so that he's the "host" for the film and immediately stands out) and modeling Leoni's character after Cary Grant's brainy and bright yet often distractedly dizzy Bringing Up Baby paleontologist.
Of course, the main star of the extras is Gervais who crafts a hilarious false anecdote about meeting his director for the first time and chats up the camera along with his dog Gia. And, to be expected, the other actors and Koepp describe how hard it was to keep from laughing when they shared the same scene as Gervais.
Proof of this can be found in the genuinely hysterical outtakes called "Some People Can Do It," (the second of three special features all offered in Blu-ray High Definition) as the actors crack each other up and Leoni scolds Gervais to keep filming and redo a scene when he rambles an alternate version of a line to ridiculous effect. Providing further humorous fodder-- Koepp and Gervais take part in a feature length commentary and those curious about the movie magic side of Town can take in the "Ghostly Effects" extra as well.
Crisp color and excellent flesh tones in a superb transfer with zero artifacting and Dolby TrueHD English 5.1 Surround (as well as French and Spanish Dolby Digital), Ghost Town's Blu-ray quality is another solid offering from Paramount and DreamWorks which seems to have the format down to a science. Likewise, the studios also thankfully provide subtitles in not just French, Spanish and Portuguese but English as well so that way you can read the jokes you find you've missed from laughing so much the first time around. And luckily for us, now that it's available on disc, we can replay our favorite scenes-- including the awkward romantic evening and Gervais' scenes with Wiig-- again and again, managing to go about "having a laugh" as loud as we want in the privacy of our own homes without worrying about anyone shoving cotton into our mouths.
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