Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
Why didn’t Ghost Town suck?
Why doesn’t Ghost Town suck? It doesn’t really deserve to be very good at all. It sounds like it was made from the infamous crappy romantic comedy checklist; Comedian of the moment-Check, emotionally needy Ghosts-Check, Greg Kinnear-Check, Egyptian penis in a jar-Check. All the elements are in place for a really crappy movie, but it ends up as one of the better movies of the last year. So why is it good?
The most important thing that Ghost Town does is establish an melancholy tone from the start. This tone really works for Ricky Gervais’s comedy style. Since he thrives on dry and low-key absurdity, his humor really stands out against the relative bleakness of the movie. The movie moves rather slowly and quitely, punctuated by humor from Gervais and Kinnear, giving the movie an poignant feel, with the humor as contrast to the general tone of the movie rather quickly moving from joke to joke like most romantic comedies.
Ghost Town manages to stay remarkably clear of cliche. Kinnear’s adultery is never redeemed; he cheated on his wife because he wanted to sleep with other women, not because of some manufactured reason. Gervais’s romantic rival is also a welcome change from romantic comedy stock characters; a human rights lawyer who literally saves Gervais’s life. The movie is smart enough to give you no reason to root against him than he stands between the protagonist and the women he desires.
Despite all this i think that the most important part of Ghost Town not sucking is the inclusion of Wilco in the sound track. Seriously, I don’t know why more directors of this simply path to movie improvement
