David Koepp’s Ghost Town pulls at the heartstrings without being too nauseating. With a tagline that implies The Sixth Sense as a romantic comedy, its tone and subject matter are roughly comparable to As Good As It Gets: the thawing of a misanthrope with some good qualities. It mostly earns it, but the last 2-3 lines of dialog don’t feel natural — the sort of thing a screenwriter might jot down first, and then later write an entire screenplay around. It’s a real bittersweet irony for Bertram’s (Ricky Gervais) first real friend (Greg Kinnear) to literally disappear.
Poor Téa Leoni is once again saddled with an age-inappropriate love interest, as she was with Ben Kingsley in You Kill Me. I can’t picture Gwen and Bertram as lovers, but I can see them as forging a real friendship, amidst their unique situation. Their characters are well-drawn enough that I can buy his ironic wit appealing to her while her supposedly perfect fiancé may be a good human being but is utterly humorless.
