Frank (Greg Kinnear) almost gets caught cheating on his wife – but then gets away with it. He gets hit by a bus. And dies. On the other side of town, a miserable and anti-social dentist, Dr. Pinkus (Ricky Gervais) goes into the hospital for a routine procedure and comes out able to converse with ghosts. “I can see dead people” but I don’t want to, would be more the plot than “The Sixth Sense.” That is until Kinnear, who has some unfinished business with his widow (Tea Leoni) is determined to change Gervais’s way of thinking by continuing t pester him. Gervais now finds he may have to actually be something he’s never been: Human. This is Leoni’s best role in years with a perplexity and range that one wouldn’t imagine her capable of in portraying a widow. The movie is an unusual comic style, smartly written, well-paced, heart felt and genuinely funny. And here’s the real surprise…it’s written and directed by David Koepp, Hollywood’s ‘it’ boy known for scribing “Spiderman” and “Jurassic Park” to name a few. Beyond that, this film with do for British comic, Ricky Gervais what “Borat” did Sasha Baren Cohen only with a lot more class. Three and a half tiaras
