Mel Gibson has purchased the Malibu home once owned by actor David Duchovny and actress wife Téa Leoni. Head over to the LA Times website for the full story and photos.

Bottom Line: It’s the feel-dead comedy of the year
By Michael Rechtshaffen

Sept. 8, 2008

Toronto International Film Festival

TORONTO — In a sea of serious festival films, “Ghost Town” stands out like a beckoning beacon of welcome frivolity.

A notable change of pace for director and co-writer David Koepp, whose screenplays tend to run along the epic lines of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” “Spider-Man” and “War of the Worlds,” this lower-key effort offers up a winning mix of sharp comedy and touching bits that keeps the laughter — a few tears — flowing.

It follows a time-honored formula, to be sure, but with the hilariously sardonic Ricky Gervais on hand to keep the creeping pathos in check, you’ve got a spirited crowd-pleaser that’s destined to be one of the biggest comedy hits of the fall season.
In his first feature starring role, Gervais is comfortably spot-on as Bertram Pincus, a miserably misanthropic New York dentist (he doesn’t hate crowds, just “the individuals within them”) whose near-death experience during a routine hospital procedure leaves him with a newfound ability: He can see dead people. Lots of them — all wandering around the streets of Manhattan with unfinished business to address, and they’re turning to Dr. Pincus as their liaison to the living.

The most persistent among them is Greg Kinnear’s Frank Herlihy, a philandering jerk who badgers Pincus into busting up the serious relationship between his Egyptologist widow (Tea Leoni) and her new beau (Billy Campbell).

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