‘Gillian’ Tries Much Too Hard To Be A ‘Ghost’

You’re young, you’re successful, and you’re in love. Life is a beach, and there is nothing on your horizon but apparent bliss … until an ill wind literally blows death your way, knocks your gorgeous wife off the mast of your sailboat and leaves you haunted by a spirit you can’t let go.

If this sounds a tad like “Ghost,” the producers of “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday” won’t mind if you say so. This sentimental tale of a man fighting through grief, blessed and cursed by the nightly visits of his dead wife, is reaching out to the same romantics who figure that death is no excuse for lovers to part.

Adapted from an 11-year-old play by Michael Brady, “Gillian” plays like an encounter-group retreat on Nantucket. It is there, at the beach house of widowed college professor David Lewis (Peter Gallagher), that he and his 16-year-old daughter, Rachel (Claire Danes), are joined for the weekend by David’s sister-in-law, Esther (Kathy Baker), her husband, Paul (Bruce Altman), and Kevin (Wendy Crewson), the divorced friend they bring along as a blind-sided date.

David hasn’t been told Kevin is coming, and she hasn’t been told that he isn’t expecting her. Worse, she doesn’t know until she arrives that the weekend marks not only the second anniversary of his wife’s death, but her birthday, as well. Gillian died the day she turned 35.

These revelations all come in the first 10 minutes, and whatever magic follows in scenes between David and the wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) he keeps alive in his mind, it can’t overcome the intrusive boorishness of Esther and Paul. The harder they push to make him face reality, the more we wish we could get on the next boat out. If he can keep his wife alive, let’s leave him alone.

Despite its apparent parallels to “Ghost,” “Gillian” takes an entirely opposite path. Throughout “Ghost,” we were made to feel desperate for a reunion of Patrick Swayze’s roaming spirit with a mourning Demi Moore. In “Gillian,” the whole purpose is to get David to give up the ghost.

I don’t know the play, but the film has one improbably rude moment after another. Esther, who is supposedly acting in good faith, comes off as an insensitive monster. First, she tries to fix her brother-in-law up with a stranger on the very weekend when his grief figures to be strongest, then announces to him that on Monday, she’s going to court to seek custody of his daughter. See you at Thanksgiving.

As much as we’d like to look forward to David’s nightly walks on the beach with Gillian (anything to get away from Paul and Esther, who are having a marriage crisis of their own), there is no magic to them. Pfeiffer makes a regal spirit in the moonlight, but the scenes are too laden with sorrow to be uplifting.

Nevertheless, there are some good performances on display. Gallagher is very convincing as a man in delusional depression, and Danes is terrific playing an awkward teenager trying to deal with her father’s problems at the same time she’s feeling the first stirrings of romance in herself. Freddie Prinze Jr. makes a strong debut as the object of her affection.

Nearly lost in the emotional chaos is Crewson, whose character wants nothing more than to be somewhere else. That’s pretty much how I felt.

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story: 1. “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday” Locations: East Sprague, Newport cinemas Credits: Directed by Michael Pressman, starring Peter Gallagher, Claire Danes, Kathy Baker, Wendy Crewson, Bruce Altman, Freddie Prinze Jr., Laurie Fortier and Michelle Pfeiffer Running time: 1:33 Rating: PG-13

2. OTHER VIEWS Here’s what other critics are saying about “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday:” Michael H. Price/Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Michelle Pfeiffer is a ghost of herself playing the ghost of somebody else in “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” a lackluster supernatural piece that makes a 92-minute running time feel like three or four hours. That said, there is still enough to like about “Gillian” that the adventurous movie buff should be able to survive a screening. Jay Boyar/Orlando Sentinel: These filmmakers have poured so much effort and emotion into this manipulative film that there is simply nothing left for us to do. For the viewer, “To Gillian” is emotionally insubstantial - a sand castle, constructed from blueprints, that’s washed away with the tide.