The Buzz On 'Ghost Town'

The reviews are in on Ricky Gervais' rom-com debut - and the results are...mixed.

In a mostly-glowing review, the Globe's Liam Lacey calls Ghost Town an "innovative romantic comedy that is a mixture of British spice and American sugar." (Lacey also notes that Gervais is part-Canadian... File that away for future cocktail party trivia!)

Meanwhile, over at the CBC, Martin Morrow calls the flick a "tepid supernatural rom-com" and "a largely uninspired parody of Ghost." He praises Gervais, though, and here's a bang-on excerpt from that bit of the review:

Like some of the great comedians (Peter Sellers springs to mind), Gervais seems to possess an inner core of melancholy. At his best, he walks the knife-edge between laughter and pathos beautifully. Think of that funny/mortifying scene in Extras when David Bowie made up a nasty song mocking Andy Millman — Andy sat there, listening politely, his ego crumbling like a biscuit in hot tea. Ghost Town doesn’t give Gervais the same opportunity for subtlety.

Slate's Dana Stevens agrees that Ghost Town "doesn't do justice to the manifold gifts of Ricky Gervais" - but she's willing to give the film some credit. It does, she writes, have "inspired casting, a few memorable scenes, and enough laughs that mainstream U.S. audiences may finally get the point of that doughy English guy with the pointy canine teeth and the high-pitched giggle."

As for me, I'm still planning to catch this one in theaters. I said above that Martin Morrow's comment was bang on - but that's exactly my problem with Ricky Gervais. That "core of melancholy" throws this cheesy-ending-loving gal right off: too much of 'The Office' and I've been known to sink into a deep funk.

If Ghost Town is vintage Gervais with some syrup mixed in, that sounds just sweet enough for me.

Zingers of the Week - SATC Edition!

Finally! My self-imposed ban on SATC reviews and responses is rescinded. This'll be a round-up of worthwhile Sex and the City movie links in general, with some zingers thrown in.

Over at CBC.ca, Katrina Onstad has a review that's mostly laudatory, not to mention a little misty-eyed about the glory days of the TV show and what it meant to so many women.

"Women with sexual appetites choosing their own futures, subverting expectation and propriety – that’s a pop-culture image that didn’t really exist before SATC debuted a decade ago, and has faded fast since the show’s conclusion," Onstad writes. "At a time when the oldest women in popular culture are Miley Cyrus and the Gossip Girl teens, the film is sure to curry favour with female audiences who are hungry to see women – no matter how unlikely their wardrobes – on screen again," she adds later.

CBC also has this great (unlikely as it might sound) comparison between Sex and the City and Little Women, and of course, a pop quiz.

In The Globe and Mail, Rick Groen gives the flick a stinging ZERO stars - and this masterful take-down.

Want some highlights? I hardly know where to start. Here's one: "Bad summer films, full of furious hype and signifying nothing, are hardly exceptional these days, nor is the sound they typically make: the dull scrape of a culture hitting rock bottom. Yet this one seems uniquely bad; this one is a threshold-breaker with a different sound, the crack of rock-bottom giving way to a whole deeper layer of magma." Or this: "To be sure, the impending nuptials hint at the presence of something akin to a plot, which lazily diverges to include all the girls in something akin to subplots." Or how about: "The male characters, straight and gay, are essentially just window-dressing here, and since that decorative job has historically been women's work in the movies, I suppose the picture can at least claim the distinction of transferring the inequity across gender lines – hoping, perhaps, that two wrongs add up to Mr. Right."

Ouch!

Slate's Timothy Noah asks a provocative question: "Is Sex and the City our culture's consolation prize to Hillary Clinton's supporters?" Here's an excerpt:

Sex and the City and the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton will, at the very least, be perceived in the distant future as twin manifestations of a weirdly conflicted feminism. As the first serious female candidate for president, Clinton broke a glass ceiling. But it's problematic that this symbol of women's progress achieved prominence as the wife of a successful male politician—one whose flagrant affair with a White House intern nearly destroyed his own presidency but not his marriage. And indeed, a fair number of prominent feminists, including Barbara Ehrenreich, Katha Pollitt, Susan Sarandon, and Mary Gordon, cast their lot with Obama.

Sex and the City, meanwhile, is a narrative that on the one hand celebrates female independence, sexual fulfillment, and career success—all important feminist goals—but on the other hand portrays women as clothes-obsessed, money-obsessed, status-obsessed, and hell-bent on catching a rich husband. (Or so I've gleaned from watching a few episodes of the TV show and reading reviews of the film.) Clinton and Sex and the City both represent a somewhat compromised female dream of power. Hillary Clinton nearly won the Democratic nomination, but only after marrying Mr. Big. Sex and the City celebrates camaraderie among strong women, but don't ask these ladies to sacrifice their Jean Paul Gaultier pajamas to pay for government-guaranteed, quality universal child care.

And that's just the beginning of the coverage from Sex-happy Slate. Dana Stevens is bang-on as usual. Second only to her reference to Jennifer Hudson as Carrie's "Girl Friday", here are the highlights:

The show's values are reprehensible, its view of gender relations cartoonish, its puns execrable. I honestly believe, as I wrote when the series finale aired in 2004, that Sex and the City is singlehandedly responsible for a measurable uptick in the number of materialistic twits in New York City and perhaps the world. And yet … and yet … there's a core truth to the show's depiction of female friendship that had me awaiting the big-screen version with exactly the kind of cream-puff nostalgia the movie's marketers are bargaining for. I want to know how the girls are doing, what's happened to them in the four years since I last joined them at brunch, and what in the name of God they're wearing.

She goes on to note: "The movie is mercifully light on those self-searching Carrie-at-the-computer scenes that were one of the series' recurring disappointments: Why did she have to be such a bad writer?" But, in the end...

If you bear even a grudging affection for the show's utopic vision of female bonding as the greatest love of all, you may get choked up when Carrie appears at Miranda's door one shitty New Year's Eve (clad only in pajamas, a sequined cloche, a full-length fur, and what appear to be patent-leather spats) and reassures her friend, "You're not alone."

More from Slate: The Medical Examiner column on the sexual habits of city girls vs. country girls. Julia Turner wonders when Carrie became a label whore. ("On Sex and the City, clothes have always served as a metaphor. Carrie's sartorial creativity symbolizes what's most appealing about her character: her openness to life and her belief that there are countless good ways to live it. The film shows us a Carrie with narrowed horizons—both sartorially and romantically. Television Carrie created her own fantasies; movie Carrie gets hers off the rack.") The Moneybox column tackles the movie's jam-packed product placement schedule. And, finally, four Slate writers really dig in and assess the movie - spoilers and all.

Every review I've read has mentioned Jennifer Hudson's character - Slate's sister site The Root offers a full article on "Saint Louise" and the phenomenon of the Black Best Friend (BBF).

Finally, fittingly, we'll close with Ella Taylor of The Village Voice:

The show's lifeblood — its trippy, backtalking, très gay script — sags into the garden-variety sassiness you'd find on any network sitcom. After sampling the movie's bloodless dialogue, I missed the show's bitchy one-liners like hell. And despite the pubic hair, well-hung penis, and mildly graphic Malibu copulating that won the movie its R rating, there are more bad sex jokes than good sex.

And so ends the chick flick event of the year.

Zingers of the Week

Up for ridicule this week: What Happens in Vegas.

We'll start with a one-liner that I came across courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes, from Mike McGranaghan in The Aisle Seat: "Ultimately, What Happens in Vegas resembles a drunken night in Sin City; when it's over, you don't really remember what happened except that it wasn't good."

Next up, some chick flick wisdom from the AP: "Come on, now. You already know What Happens in Vegas. You've undoubtedly seen the ubiquitous television commercials in which Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher bicker and beat each other black and blue but, secretly, seethe with lust. And you already know that they'll end up softening their stances and falling for each other in the end — it's pretty standard stuff by now. One does not go to a romantic comedy for the Shyamalan-style plot twists." Touche.

Back to Rotten Tomatoes again for a line that gets bonus points for dissing several chick flicks at once. Thanks, Creative Loafing! Here goes: What Happens in Vegas is "less obnoxious than Fool's Gold, less forced than Made of Honor and less formulaic (well, by a sliver, anyway) than 27 Dresses."

Zingers of the Week

As I may have mentioned before, I'm nearly as big a sucker for vitriolic witticisms directed at chick flicks as I am for the flicks themselves. Hence, a new feature for the site: Zingers of the Week, courtesy of new (or recent) chick flick releases and the reviewers who dislike them.

First up, the Globe and Mail's Jason McBride, who asks of Canadian pseudo-ironic indie comedy Prom Wars: "If it's lame, derivative, and doesn't make you laugh, is it really a comedy?"

Next is Robert Wilonsky, writing for the Village Voice. He notes the similarities between Baby Mama and a January 2007 episode of 30 Roc, and concludes: "Baby Mama extends the joke, then softens it, then smothers it in its crib—an unpleasant picture perhaps, but not any more disagreeable than the phrase 'Produced by Lorne Michaels'." Ouchie!

Made of Honor gets not one but two mentions - incidentally, both imply that the answer to the question I asked yesterday is: My Best Friend's Wedding.

After some hilariously vicious commentary on McDreamy's career, Robert Wilonsky comes down with a verdict: "Director Paul Weiland and the three (!) screenwriters it took to boil down thousands of bad movies into 101 minutes haven't provided this one with a single original thought; it should only entertain those still getting adjusted to the idea of talkies."

And finally, after some digression (be sure to read her full anecdote about I Liked It Better Guy!) Katrina Onstad decides that bride-to-be Kathleen Monaghan is the best thing about the movie:

"If I knew how, I’d make a Youtube mashup of Made of Honor and My Best Friend’s Wedding in which Monaghan ends up with Dermot Mulroney, leaving Cameron Diaz for Patrick Dempsey, and Julia Roberts alone — I liked that best the first time."