The fall movie season achieves comic liftoff thanks to Ricky Gervais, a master of deadpan hilarity playing a dentist who sees dead people. If you don't know Gervais from the original Brit TV version of The Office or HBO's Extras, then you are an idiot and deserve root-canal surgery without Novocain. Wait, I'm starting to sound like Bertram Pincus, the Scrooge in a dental smock for whom hell is other people. (Listen, he does live in Manhattan.) When a colonoscopy gone wrong gives Bertram a taste…

Appropriately funny, surprisingly sweet, Ghost Town just might give Brit funnyman Ricky Gervais a career in the American romantic comedy milieu--if he wants it, that is.

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Don't get me wrong--Gervais' acerbic, socially reclusive dentist Bertram Pincus isn't really the catch of the century. On the contrary. He'd rather drink battery acid then have to speak to anyone directly, including his attractive new neighbor Gwen (Tea Leoni). But Bertram gets a severe attitude adjustment when he…