We’ve seen the new Ricky Gervais film!

Posted by Boyd on Wednesday 06 Aug 2008

Filed under: Ricky Gervais

Well, he may not have written and directed it, like he did with The Office and Extras, but Ricky Gervais is about to be seen in his first ever lead role in a big Hollywood movie, and we’ve seen it. The film is called Ghost Town, and it’s a high-concept romantic comedy in which Ricky plays a miserable, anti-social Brit dentist who starts seeing ghosts after he has a near-death experience (it’s actually more of a full-death experience, but we’ll explain all that when we review it properly in the mag before its UK release on 24 October). The always-excellent Greg Kinnear plays a dead man who wants Ricky to intervene and stop his widow (Tea Leoni) from marrying an annoying doofus. The film is written and directed by super-hot David Koepp, who wrote the most recent Indiana Jones blockbuster.

We won’t give anything else away, except to say it’s a proper, old-fashioned comedy, and that if any cynical film critics are readying their illuminated pens in the hope they can say Gervais has made a fool of himself in his first Hollywood lead, they’re going to be disappointed. Ricky is flat-out great in it, and has, in one fell swoop, proved he can be a totally convincing romantic comedy lead, in the classic style of Woody Allen or Albert Brooks (Albert who? Check out Lost In America or Defending Your Life on DVD – all-time comedy classics!).