My dentist is a friendly, chatty person but back when I had braces, my orthodontist was a buttoned down, sour man who really didn’t seem to think that there might be more to life than one’s overbite.

Ghost Town’s Bertram Pincus, D.D.S. (Ricky Gervais of  the British The Office and Extras fame) is the latter kind of dentist, completely antisocial in the way that only some people who work with the public seem to be. His favorite part of the job is putting cotton gauze into the mouths of patients so that they will stop talking to him. He can’t even deal with would-be friends, avoiding celebrating  his dentistry partner (Aasif Mandvi, very good in this small role) becoming a father.

Our rude jerk of a protagonist (no, I won’t call him the hero) requests general anaesthesia for a colonoscopy and due to anaesthesia complications dies for 7 minutes during the procedure. When he is revived, he can see ghosts almost everywhere. Not scary ghosts, as this is a comedy, but ghosts who look just like anyone else to Dr. Pincus, but whom the rest of the world doesn’t see and walks through.

The ghosts are all very excited to be seen by someone who can actually interact with the physical world, and all of them want Pincus’ help in resolving something in this world so they can move on. The most persistent of these is Frank (Greg Kinnear) who wants Pincus to discredit the man (Billy Campbell, looking like he needs some rest)  that  Frank’s widow Gwen (Tea Leoni) is dating. The movie is a kind of homage to 1937’s Topper, except that Pincus can see more than two ghosts.

Pincus unexpectedly (or perhaps expectedly, as this is a movie) falls for Gwen himself, and there are some hysterical if uncomfortable scenes of his attempts to win her over. I’m not sure which is more funny, Pincus’ complete confidence that he has scored major points when he insultingly points out that the mummy she is studying had a tooth abscess, or Frank’s delighted disbelief when it turns out to be true. There are those who may even go so far as to describe this movie as a romantic comedy, but I don’t go that far. It is a comedy. It isn’t romantic. However, while Pincus and Gwen’s scenes may be overblown for comic effect (and nobody, bar none, can gag and gasp as hilariously as Ricky Gervais), there is a painful truthfulness to them that makes them almost authentic somehow.

Ricky Gervais, as usual, does an excellent job of being an unlikeable man that we all do somehow like nevertheless. It’s a fine line and he walks it with nary a bobble. Tea Leoni does a fine turn as the widow with conflicted feelings about her dead husband, and Greg Kinnear shines as the too-late repentant husband, ever debonair as he died in his tuxedo. This contrasts nicely with Pincus, who spends over half the movie in his dentist’s smock.

This is definitely a comedy, and I laughed out loud several times. Ricky Gervais excels at comedy so uncomfortable that you wince, and there are definitely those moments as well, because death has bite, even in a comedy.