Ghost Town (2008)

Ricky Gervais stars as Bertram Pincus, a mean-spirited English dentist in New York who briefly “dies” on the operating table. When he recovers, he’s suddenly able to see the spirits of dead people. Not only that, but these spirits also want him to communicate with their living friends and relatives to resolve a matter that’s keeping each of them in spiritual limbo. Pincus is pushed by dead businessman Frank (Greg Kinnear) to break up a relationship between his Egyptologist widow Gwen (Téa Leoni) and a pompous human-rights lawyer (Billy Campbell). But inevitably he begins to fall in love with her. 

It’s not a bad premise at all, but the problem is that it’s simply not very funny for the first half. It improves considerably in the second half as the surreal ghost story resolves into a romantic comedy. But throughout the story, Gervais seems somewhat miscast and he’s far less funny when he’s reading other people’s lines. 

Kristen Wiig is entertaining as a surgeon who’s preoccupied with her fake tan, and the brief scenes with her tend to come alive. 

The film works round to a satisfying conclusion despite some annoying music (romantic scenes are more affecting with instrumental tracks than with someone singing “earnestly”), but it’s uneven and could have been so much better.

The Invention of Lying (2009)

Ricky Gervais stars as Mark Bellison in an offbeat but flawed comedy in which people are incapable of speaking nothing but the truth. When Bellison finds out that he can lie, he discovers that he has the means to change the world.

The concept is brilliant (imagine a world in which there’s no fiction of any kind), but somehow the film never develops its full potential. It’s especially intriguing as a critique of religion: when Bellison is overheard fibbing to his dying, frightened mother that she’ll have a wonderful afterlife, he accidentally creates a whole new belief system. But the anticipated satire on religion – a topic Gervais has strong opinions on – never really arrives.

There’s also a confusion between honesty and unkindness. Just because people speak the truth doesn’t mean they have to be rude and unpleasant. Wouldn’t kind people speak kind truths? We never find out because most of the characters are so obnoxious. This issue is complicated by the “love interest”, played by Jennifer Garner, who grows fond of Bellison but won’t marry him because he’s “fat” with “a snub nose”. She’d rather be with the callous, shallow egotist played by Rob Lowe because he apparently has better genes. It’s difficult to see why Bellison likes her.

Cameos by Christopher Guest and Philip Seymour Hoffman seem thrown away.

There are some funny moments, and the central premise is a fascinating one, but it just feels like a missed opportunity.

Cemetery Junction (2010)

Written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, this film has all the pathos, humour and drama that made The Office so special. The romance story at its heart is also very similar to that of Tim and Dawn in that show – even down to the idea of a girl wanting to pursue a creative urge (painting/photography) despite a heartless boyfriend standing in her way.

The film tells the story of three working-class friends (Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes and Jack Doolan) coming of age in Cemetery Junction, Reading, in 1973. Each of them struggles with the limits imposed by a backward-looking English community. When one of them starts to think outside of the small-town confines, he finds his family and colleagues are less than open-minded about his ambitions.

Felicity Jones plays Julie, a glamorous photographer who wants to travel and live a more fulfilling life than the one her nasty, selfish father (Ralph Fiennes) and boyfriend (Matthew Goode) have planned for her. Ricky Gervais plays a racist, unpleasant father bickering with his family, while Steve Merchant has only a brief walk-on cameo.

The period detail is well-observed, although sometimes things look a little too clean and bright.

There’s an unbeatable soundtrack (David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Roxy Music, T.Rex – even Elton John sounds good in this context) and a powerful sense of yearning.  Plenty of laughs, too, amid some serious points about class and social aspirations.

Trivia: Emily Watson plays Felicity Jones’ mother, just as she did in the Stephen Hawkins biopic The Theory of Everything (2014).