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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 10/28/2008 : 11:05:13
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Ghost Town
I don't believe in ghosts or an after life, but that hasn't stopped me enjoying a succession of ghost-related media offerings since I was a kid. Though the 1995 Casper feature film was a bit of a disaster - I loved the Casper the Friendly Ghost comic books and cartoon serials at my weekly movie-trips [kids today don't get those little extras before the double-feature - hell, they don't even get a double-feature! Of course, I am 106 and those were the days of steam-movies ...] but I digress ...
Then there was the Topper series on tv, with the muffin-faced Leo G Carroll as a straight-laced banker being haunted by the dead Kerbys. I didn't know until later that it had originally been a novel by the very amusing Thorne Smith which in turn had been filmed in 1937, starring Cary Grant as the dead George Kerby who, with his equally dead wife Marion, realize they must reform their old pal Topper before they'll be able to get to that big stock market in the sky.
These were all comic treatments, since when we've been offered cine-ghosts down a side-alley of horror - The Others, The Sixth Sense, etc
Flash forward to Ghost Town, taking us back to those pre-horror roots with a modern comic talent in the unlikely shape of Ricky Gervais as the leading man. He proves, here that he's not only a new wrinkle in stand up, but he can act - not just as a single character guiding each episode of The Office or Extras, but in a sustained tale that demands he change his outlook on life.
Let's be honest, he's a thoroughly unpleasant fellow when we first meet him. A dentist who's not so much monomaniacal as solipsistic, almost to a psychotic point. He's the kind of dentist who would prefer to remove entirely the mouth of his patients, work on them, and then mail them back without ever having to meet them. Or talk to them. Or listen to them. He shoves entire packets of those rolled up cotten-woolly thingys into their mouths just to shut them up.
So when a small misadventure occurs during a hospital procedure on himself, leaving him with the ability to see and speak with all of NYC's ghosts - who all want him to fix something they've left undone prior to their deaths - he's not exactly walking down Happy Avenue.
More than ably supporting Gervais are ghost Greg Kinnear and his widow Tea Leoni, both oozing sufficient charm to balance the dystopian dentist. How Ricky learns to focus on others and grow as a person is the message. Sadly, it's not so much sweet as sickly saccharine. Though the journey is extremely funny indeed. Still, if you want to see the source material transcend the many anomalies of this version, try to get the 1937 version.
If you go to this one, though, watch out for Aasif Mandvi as the other dentist in the practice. You'll probably recognize him from lotsa US tv -- here he gives as subtle a performance as Gervais and surely deserves more screen attention.
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Salopian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 10/28/2008 : 15:15:50
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I was a bit unsure to start with but it warmed up.
What I want to know is -- what does the ghost nurse want? And the naked guy? |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 10/28/2008 : 15:46:40
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopixn
I was a bit unsure to start with but it warmed up.
What I want to know is -- what does the ghost nurse want? And the naked guy?
dunno about her, but he obviously wanted to stick his penis into Tea's ear 
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Salopian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 10/28/2008 : 15:52:13
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| I shouldn't have asked... |
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BiggerBoat 
"Pass me the harpoon"
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Posted - 10/28/2008 : 18:00:14
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quote:
Originally posted by 9afta9abe
Ghost Town
I don't believe in ghosts...
They're real. I saw one with my brother when I was a kid. Scared the living shit out of me. Don't even bother trying to find out the story and rationally explain what I saw - it was a ghost; it was scary.
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Whippersnapper. 
"A fourword thinking guy."
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Posted - 10/28/2008 : 18:20:34
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Yeah, they're attracted to gluesniffers, apparently.
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 01/15/2009 : 21:59:23
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| Cute. That's all. Gervais was the main reason: he's one of those guys who I just find funny doing pretty much anything. A casual pleasure, a nice rental for a quiet evening. |
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Ghost Town
