Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais, lying down) discovers that he can see ghosts in the film Ghost Town. (DreamWorks Pictures)

“Everything I do is a little bit like the guy in The Office,” Ricky Gervais admitted to George Stroumboulopoulos during an interview on The Hour earlier this year. “I am a very limited actor.” The popular U.K. comic may have meant that as a pre-emptive strike before the critics got to Ghost Town, his first starring feature. If so, he needn’t have worried — he’s the best thing about this tepid supernatural rom-com.

Gervais stars as Bertram Pincus, a British dentist based in New York, who, after dying (briefly) on the operating table during a colonoscopy, is able to see dead people. Bertram is a morose misanthrope who sedulously avoids human contact, but soon, he’s being petitioned by hordes of pleading souls looking for a little earthly closure. Chief among the phantom pests is Frank (Greg Kinnear), a caddish attorney who was cheating on his wife when a freak accident on a Manhattan street curtailed his philandering for good. Frank is distressed by the fact that his widow, Gwen (Téa Leoni), is engaged to another lawyer who appears to be a gold digger. To get Bertram to intervene on his behalf, Frank promises the dentist he’ll keep the other ghostly stalkers at bay.

Frank’s scheme requires Bertram to woo Gwen away from her fiancé while he provides some invisible coaching – sort of a paranormal Cyrano de Bergerac arrangement. Bertram, however, discovers that the fiancé isn’t a heel but a selfless – if humourless – human-rights lawyer. Further, Bertram himself has fallen head over heels for Gwen, an Egyptologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She and Bertram bond after he suggests poor dental hygiene may have caused the death of a mummified pharaoh. But discussing mummy mandibles is one thing; if Bertram wants a real shot at love, he’ll have to begin caring about other people – starting with all those whiny wraiths.

Directed by seasoned screenwriter David Koepp, from a screenplay by him and John Kamps, Ghost Town is a largely uninspired parody of Ghost, The Sixth Sense, Heart and Souls and the like. However, there’s also a sly nod to an older source: Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Bertram is really Scrooge transplanted to the Upper East Side, complete with apparitions, a cheery foil (Bertram’s South Asian dental partner, played by Aasif Mandivi) and a broken heart to explain his misanthropy. There’s even a faint echo of Dickens in some of his lines.

It’s a perfect role for Gervais, who specializes in the antisocial boor. He plays grumpy Bertram with waspish zest. And yes, there is a little bit of The Office’s David Brent in his performance, as well as Andy Millman, his alter ego from Extras. The first half of Ghost Town has some of the zing of those two series, especially when Bertram confronts an evasive surgeon (Kristen Wiig) about his botched colonoscopy, or uses nitrous oxide to extract information from one of his dental patients. It’s when the story takes a turn toward the sincere that it loses its momentum. Koepp and Kamps, having shown some comic bite, suddenly decide to gum us with heartwarming slobber that will make Gervais fans gag.

Bertram (Ricky Gervais, left) tries to win over Gwen (Tea Leoni) with help from the ghost of her late husband, Frank (Greg Kinnear). (DreamWorks Pictures)

It’s a shame, since the man has the capacity to be a dramatic actor. 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. It goes soft and mushy, all teary eyes and gooey strings, even as he struggles to give Bertram a quietly credible conversion from grinch to good guy.

The angular Gwen, bristling with neurotic tics, is an amusing contrast to Gervais’s stocky cynic. Leoni hasn’t had a really funny role since Flirting with Disaster, but she’s quite enjoyable in this movie; here, her skittish style translates convincingly as the wariness of a woman previously betrayed. As her late husband, the smarmy Kinnear looks like he’s lifted his comic mannerisms from old Jack Lemmon movies – without borrowing any of Lemmon’s charm. Most of the minor performances are forgettable, save for Saturday Night Live’s Wiig; she contributes a hilarious cameo as the ditzy surgeon obsessed with her spray-on tan.

Ghost Town reminds me of Tina Fey’s feature debut, Baby Mama – another so-so movie that fails to exploit the comic potential of a terrific TV comedian. Why did Gervais pick this picture as his first starring vehicle? My guess is that, like so many films, it looked a lot better on paper. Actually, the real mystery of Ghost Town is why Gervais’s dentist character has such bad teeth. Physician, heal thyself.

Ghost Town opens Sept. 19.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.