Ghost Town
(2008/DreamWorks/Paramount Blu-ray + DVD-Video)
Picture:
B/C+ Sound: B/C+ Extras: D Film: D
Playing
like Meet Joe Black for morons, Ghost Town is writer David Koepp’s
attempt to do a comedy and it is the worst work of a career that has had its
commercial highs (Panic Room, Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible, Jurassic
Park, even The Shadow) and lows
(Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The
Crystal Skull, Secret Window, Toy Soldiers) as a writer, but except
for Trigger Effect, never worked as
a director. Ghost Town (2008) is one of his worst efforts yet as both.
In it, a
married business guy (Greg Kinnear, so much better and better off in Flash Of Genius, one of 2008’s most
underrated films) is killed in a freak accident, so now he is dead and guess
what? This is still going to be a
romantic comedy! Ricky Gervais is a
dentist who he will use to contact his wife, but he falls for her too, newly
widowed as she is. There is no chemistry
here, all is exceptionally stupid, visual effects are weaker than they should
be and how they got a Beatles classic for the opening is sad. The song is “I’m Looking Through You” and its application is as unfunny as this
whole mess.
It also
wants to spoof The Sixth Sense, but
proves how redundant and played out that idea is. Bad idea, bad film.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is nothing to write home about, on the
soft side with odd colors from the shoot, which is 35mm with odd color from the
digital internegative work. Director of
Photography Fred Murphy can do some good work (Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus) but
this is one of his flat commercial jobs like Drillbit Taylor or RV. The anamorphically enhanced DVD is even
harder to watch with bad Video Black, worse color and weaker detail. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 on the Blu-ray is
towards the screen too much, The Beatles song does not sound that good (compare
to the 5.1 DVD disc from the double disc Love release) and the Dolby Digital
5.1 version is even weaker. Dialogue-based,
the recording is good if that.
Extras include
an effects featurette, two making of featurettes and Koepp/Gervais feature
length audio commentary.
- Nicholas Sheffo
