After a botched colonoscopy becomes a near-fatal experience, comedian Ricky Gervais (best known from the British version of “The Office”) can see dead people. But unlike Haley Joel Osment and Whoopi Goldberg before him, Gervais’ snide dentist character Bertram Pincus also hates live people. So it is especially unpleasant for him and a source of humor for us when his close encounters of the apparitional kind force him to become a bridge between the two realms in “Ghost Town.”
Though never fully uproarious, the supernatural romantic comedy works to the extent that it does thanks almost exclusively to the snarky jocularity and likeability of the great English comedian. Gervais is a blithe spirit on small screen and large, even when shilling derivative material that’s merely adequate, like today’s offering.
