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!).
Ricky is great in new film