_**Top-of-the-line drama/thriller tackles the afterlife**_ A man suddenly discovers that he's a ghost (Patrick Swayze) and means to find his killer while protecting his former fiancé (Demi Moore). Tony Goldwyn plays his business partner while Whoopi Goldberg is on hand as a psychic spiritual advisor. Like all great movies, “Ghost” (1990) takes about 15-20 minutes to establish the characters and then takes off, gripping the viewer until the end. It combines drama, thrills and comedy in its fascinating exploration of the hereafter and is cut from the same cloth as future movies “City of Angels” (1998), “Meet Joe Black” (1998) and “The Sixth Sense” (1999). While the film’s theology is no deeper than a Jack T. Chick tract and I don’t agree with every jot & tittle, it effectively conveys its profound ideas in a way that is palatable to the masses. The movie runs 2 hours, 6 minutes and was shot in New York City (Manhattan and Brooklyn), Paramount Studios and downtown Los Angeles. GRADE: A/A-

Tony Goldwyn should have been a more popular actor. He was actually pretty exceptional in almost everything he has done but never actually made it to superstar status. Instead he kind of lingered in supporting actor limbo through the 90s and then kind of disappeared. It's a shame. And he's not the only unsung hero in Ghost, Vincent Schiavelli is in it too. It has a great cast that brings their all to the film. The script isn't that imaginative, you've seen a few movies like this before, but that never really matters when it's done well.

"Sam" (Patrick Swayze) and his girlfriend "Molly" (Demi Moore) aren't the best at pottery, but they do know how to make a mess! A trip to the theatre to see the Scottish play doesn't end well though, as he is randomly attacked in the street. She's desolate but fortunately his work colleague "Carl" (Tony Goldwyn) is on hand to try to help her through the aftermath. What she doesn't know, though, is that "Sam" is stuck in limbo. He can't move on and so must watch her every day life unfold. Quickly, he realises that his old pal is keen on "Molly" and then, even worse, begins to suspect that his death wasn't quite as random as it might have seemed. How can he talk to her; warn her? Well that's where the star of the show comes in. "Oda Mae" (Whoopi Goldberg) is a medium who spends her time telling old widows that their long dead husbands still love them. She is ill-prepared to star in her own version of "Blithe Spirit", though, and that doesn't get any easier when she tries to convince "Molly" she is really in touch with "Sam" and that he is terrified that she may also be a target of a nefarious plot. The Righteous Brothers also have to take a share of the plaudits here as their "Unchained Melody" refrain helps set the scene for a romantic mystery that's peppered with some tea-time menace and a Goldberg who is at the top of her game. The plot itself isn't maybe the strongest and I'm glad I didn't have an account with his bank, but it's two hours that flies by keeping sentimentality and slapstick to a minimum and allowing the spirit of "Madame Arcati" to enter the 1990s enjoyably. There are even nuns, too!

"Ghost" manages to successfully cut across a variety of genres, but unfortunately very few of them are used to particularly rewarding effect. The comedy doesn't even manage to raise the occasional chuckle, so there is a necessarily heavy reliance upon the romance. It undoubtedly soothes the heart broken amongst us to believe our loved ones are still dutifully watching over us with tender loving care and this film plays to that desire in people with a lot of help from The Righteous Brothers brilliantly singing the superb "Unchained Melody" on the soundtrack. This beautifully evocative song should be all it takes to do the job for incurably dewy eyed romantics all over the world, while the rest of us must content ourselves with a reasonably unchallenging motion picture experience hampered by some surprisingly mediorce visual effects.