Ghost Town (Blu-ray)

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Like all good romantic comedies, "Ghost Town" is sweet and affecting as well as gently humorous. Gervais makes an uncommonly pleasing impression as the dyed-in-the-wool grump, creating a character at once offensive yet sympathetic.

And who can resist a winning moral lesson: People, living and dead, have to find their way home. Can't beat that.

Video:
In Blu-ray high definition, the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen picture shows up clearly and brightly using an MPEG-4/AVC transfer on a dual-layer BD50. Here, you'll find deep black levels and rich, cushy colors throughout, maybe brighter, glossier, and glassier than real life but appropriate to a comedy. However, you'll also find that faces can range from rather dark to yellowish to perfectly natural, sometimes within the same shot, a somewhat disconcerting oddity.

Audio:
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio delivers a fairly wide, smooth front-channel stereo spread, even if there isn't much surround activity involved. A few of the musical background numbers show off the soundtrack's bass and dynamics, and occasionally you'll hear some environmental city noises, but it doesn't amount to much. As one might expect, this is a dialogue-driven story, so the center channel gets a workout.

Extras:
Like most discs these days, this one contains an audio commentary by the movie's director, David Koepp, and star, Ricky Gervais. They keep their comments lively, ironic, informative, and humorous. After that are three featurettes in high definition. The first, "Making Ghost Town," is a standard behind-the-scenes affair lasting about twenty-three minutes. The second, "Ghostly Effects," is a standard CGI affair, lasting about two minutes. The third, "Some People Can Do It," is essentially a six-minute gag reel, with outtakes of Gervais cracking up and giggling during shooting.

Things wrap up with twelve scene selections and bookmarks; pop-up menus; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
I appreciate that Paramount/DreamWorks are using BD50s and lossless audio on most all of their newest Blu-ray releases, big and small. It displays the promise of the high-definition disc format to its best advantage and shows that the studio is making a serious commitment to its future.

As for "Ghost Town," the most obvious comparison would be the 1990 hit "Ghost" with Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Swayze, and Demi Moore. Like its more celebrated predecessor, "Ghost Town" combines fantasy, comedy, and romance in equal measure, although the newer film has the edgier tone. Also like "Ghost," "Ghost Town" ends on a sentimental yet wholly uplifting note, which in itself is probably enough to warrant a look. I enjoyed the film quite a lot more than I thought I would.

Footnote: After watching the movie and writing up my initial standard-def review, I read an interview with Gervais in which he says that the studio offered the role of the antisocial dentist to at least four other actors who passed on it: Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, and Jack Black. I dunno; every actor brings something unique to a part, and I'm sure any one of them would have been fine. Yet it's always fun to speculate. It seems to me that Carell might have been a bit too congenial in the role; Ferrell might have been too madly frustrated; and Stiller and Black might have seemed too frenetically over the edge. All things considered, Gervais's subdued, low-key, unforced humor seems perfect for the job. In the end, serendipity prevails.

"Oh, my god, is he dead?"
"He ain't happy."

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