Ghost Town

I've been a fan of Ricky Gervais since his early days on The 11 O'Clock Show where he used to do a little stand up so when I had the chance to watch his first Hollywood lead movie I was rather excited.

Gervais obviously brings a lot of himself to each role but certainly the characters he writes for himself (David Brent from The Office and Andy Millman from Extras) are subtly different and so it proves with his character, Bertram Pincus, in this. A man whose most certainly not a people person.

So when he spends seven minutes 'dead' during a routine operation and has to deal with not only the living but the ghosts of the dead he's understandably even less happy.

Greg Kinnear provides excellent support as a ghost who offers to help with Pincus's ghost problem in return for splitting Kinnear's widow (played by a rather lovely Téa Leoni) from her new fiance. What follows could be viewed as a fairly formularic rom com if not for Gervais's brilliant performance.

It's a very touching and very funny film that I enjoyed an awful lot.