"Ghost Town"

[Ralph]

I don't mind at all if a romantic comedy has a dollop of sappiness as long as I'm entertained. David Koepps's "Ghost Town," filmed entirely in Manhattan, does just that.

Ricky Gervais is a choleric dentist who can't stand his babbling patients. He's nursing the memory of a lost love and while successful in his practice, he has no friends. A colonoscopy goes slightly wrong and he's supposedly dead for seven minutes. That interlude projects him into contact with myriad dead people, all with unfirnished earthly business, all seeking his help so they can find peace (and heaven?). The most persistent is a dapper dude, killed in a collision with a bus, played by Greg Kinnear. This fellow can't find eternal rest until his beautiful wife, Tea Leoni, is freed from the engagement with a human rights lawyer to whom she is engaged. Never mind he was making plans to buy a pad to house his paramour on the day he caught the M4.

What follows ia bit of slapstick comedy as the harried dentist tries to escape the following horde of the (not completely) dead. He strikes a deal with the formerly philandering fellow to try and woo his former wife and free her from her fiance. Tea Leoni is a sharp, successful curator at the Met of ancient Egytpian artifacts, including a mummy with a large phallus.

Terrific small role here for a beautiful Great Dane.

Predictably, our dentist works his way back into the human race. The ending won't surprise anyone.

But it's a New York story and it's fun.