When Dr. Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) returns to the hospital where he underwent a colonoscopy, he presses the doctor about whether anything unusual happened.

Yes and no, she hedges. "Technically, medically speaking, you died a little bit." Just enough to be brought back to life with no physical complications, other than the ability to see and hear ghosts who pester the dentist for favors.

Manhattan, it turns out, is a real "Ghost Town," and Pincus is the only person who bridges the worlds of the living and the dead in this romantic comedy from director and co-writer David Koepp.

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'Ghost Town'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Starring: Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni.
• Rating: PG-13 for some strong language, sexual humor and drug references.
• Web site: 'Ghost Town'

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It's about life after death -- your own or your loved one's -- and while it doesn't reinvent ghost stories or romcoms, "Ghost Town" proves both pleasant and smart. It underplays its hand, with a concluding exchange of dialogue that can be interpreted literally, figuratively or both ways.

"Ghost Town" has a spirited version of a "meet-cute," in which Pincus walks through the recently deceased Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) although he sneezes on the other side. Frank, gone now 14 months, wants Pincus to stop his widow, Gwen (Tea Leoni), from marrying a lawyer (Billy Campbell).

If Pincus does this favor, Frank promises to make the horde of ghosts haunting the dentist go away. If Pincus is skittish and sarcastic with the living, however, he's even more dismissive of the dead.

David Koepp, director and co-writer, casts Gervais as the lead, an unconventional choice to say the least. As the story peels away his armor of abrasiveness, we see he isn't a bad guy, just a lonely one who is ill at ease with patients, colleagues and strangers.

Kinnear brings effortless charm to Frank, and Leoni makes Gwen, an archaeologist who deals with the dead daily, bright and vulnerable. Campbell may be just a bit too appealing, although maybe it's because I still associate him with the superb series "Once and Again."

"Ghost Town" was shot in New York, including in Central Park and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (sometimes played by the Brooklyn Museum), so the movie can make grand use of its setting and not settle for tight shots of actors stitched together with separately photographed skylines.

It's not the best ghost movie ever told, nor the worst. It's not a weepie like "Truly, Madly, Deeply" or a wacky fantasy such as "Beetlejuice" or a quiet thriller such as "The Sixth Sense," but a thoughtful, enjoyable movie about putting ghosts to rest and learning to join or rejoin the living.