Ghosted review: Chris Evans and Ana de Armas never quite Bond
The underwhelming Apple TV+ rom-com features de Armas as a super spy, Evans as a lovestruck farm boy, and a bunch of familiar villains
Film Reviews Chris Evans
It’s surely a measure of how far the star system has fallen that so many A-list actors agreed to be in Ghosted, either as leads or in cameos. This action rom-com arriving on Apple TV+ feels like barely a first draft in every regard, from the flimsy script to the awkward, unpolished CG to the lazy music choices (a car chase set to “My Sharona” here, a fight scored with “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” there). That it comes from Rocketman director Dexter Fletcher and Deadpool and Zombieland screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick is flat-out dismaying; either they didn’t care or they’re losing their abilities. It’s the sort of movie that makes a running gag out of minor characters constantly telling leads Chris Evans and Ana de Armas that they should “Get a room,” despite the fact that, well, they already did in the movie’s first act.
To the extent that Ghosted works at all, it’s thanks to the cast. A centerpiece scene likely to be talked about features an array of bounty hunters popping up, each one killing the last, all played by familiar actors in surprise appearances, riffing on their previous roles. The material they have to work with is that same “Get a room” line; the laughs, if any, come from their pre-existing personas, not the clunky dialogue or the awkwardly staged kills.
Also, this action movie doesn’t have any action for the first 30 minutes. We meet Sadie (de Armas) telling a counselor over her car phone that, “My cold, empty house has a cold, empty fridge.” She encounters Cole (Evans) at a farmer’s market where, looking to buy a houseplant on her therapist’s advice, the two get into a debate about which vegetation she’d be best able to care for. Banter becomes a date, an all-day date ends up in the bedroom, and needy Cole spends the next day sending texts that get no response.
When he realizes his geo-tagged asthma inhaler was left in her purse for … reasons … Cole traces it to London, then decides he will be spontaneous for the first time in his life and fly there to surprise her. This despite the fact that he’s never left the country before. When he shows up, he’s kidnapped by evil spies who accuse him of being an assassin called the Taxman. Lo and behold, Sadie shows up to kick ass and save his bacon, then reveal they’re actually in Pakistan now, where control of a biological WMD is at stake.
It’s clear why de Armas got cast—she’s here for all the critics who complained we didn’t see enough of her as an associate or potential paramour of James Bond in No Time To Die. Evans, however, seems to be a case of the Wrong Chris. Guileless farm boy, good at outdoorsy stuff, shoots guns but never at people, never left the United States, a wrestling fan, drawn to women who kick ass and kill, and hopelessly naive about geopolitics despite a love of history? That should have been Pratt, all the way. Evans comes across as too smart for a role that requires a bit of lunkhead method acting.
Among the villains needing vanquishing are Tim Blake Nelson as a Russian-accented torturer fond of digitally animated murder hornets, and Adrien Brody as the world’s second-most English Frenchman (No. 1 will always be Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek) whose accent varies scene to scene. The finale, which imagines what we all fear might happen if a revolving restaurant picked up speed, is clever in theory, but none of the action here is great in execution. It’s also not really believable that Cole would become a fighter equal to global terrorists after just a couple of days, but it’s still more credible than the digital compositing in most of the movie.
Ghosted takes bits and pieces from Knight And Day, North By Northwest, and Romancing The Stone, among others, but does so as if forcibly compelled rather than inspired. Unlike every other recent film to have referenced Romancing The Stone, it does at least remember to include the sex. There’s a funny notion in Chris Evans effectively playing a damsel in distress, but like everything else in Ghosted, the filmmakers have no idea how to play it.
Ghosted premieres April 21 on Apple TV+
58 Comments
“Ishtar,” “Heaven’s Gate” and dozens of other awful movies have had great casts. I guess the “Star System” fell apart decades ago.
The best thing about Heaven’s Gate was that Willem Dafoe got kicked off the set for giggling and then, decades later, got ultimate revenge by narrating a documentary about how much of a shitshow Heaven’s Gate was.
want to see that!
Ask and ye shall receive, my jittery arachnid friend:I don’t think it mentions my favourite bit of Cimino Insanity, which is where he wanted the main street be like 6ft wider, so he told the set builder to tear down both sides, and move each side back 3ft.The builder said it’d be faster, easier, and cheaper to just tear down one side and move it back 6ft, but, no. Cimino insisted 3ft on both sides, because auteur cinema genius or something.
those movies are good, though.
saw Ishtar during my hospital stay for pancreatitis and it was the best thing I watched in there. Laughing my ass off. Heaven’s Gate is amazing. Last time I watched it in Prince Charles Cinema it turned out to be one of my favourite films ever. Ghosted is just mediocrity bad, with a very undecided tone, a male character that goes from cute to unbelievably dumb and as explained in the review extremely lazy musical choices.
ishtar was one of those movies i put on as a goof because i heard it was so terrible and quickly became one of my faves of all time. you can trace a lot of modern comedy back to it.
Just tell someone that the movie stars Ana de Armas and Chris Evans and they’ll be lining up to be a brief cameo and/or baddie. Now… how they got de Armas and Evans? Maybe incriminating photos or something.
“I’ve obtained pictures of Chris Evans’ dick, and if he doesn’t agree to be in this film I’ll release them. He’ll do anything to stop that kind of photo getting out.”“I have bad news for you Marty…”
Naked photos with Chubby Carol…
It’s too bad because both the leads are incredibly likable and can act, but I could tell from the trailer that this was going to suck. They need better agents.
No offence intended to Luke Thompson, but this is the kind of film I’ll always want Ignatiy Vishnavetsky to have reviewed. Ah, well…
Y do you think that?
Right? Is D+ really a gentleman’s F if it’s not from Ignatiy or AA review?
I thought it was D-? Might have to check the archives to figure it out.
A D+ is an AA Dowd B-.
Aw. Seems like it should be a slam dunk.
ahahahaha
Aren’t fridges supposed to be cold? Maybe not empty, but certainly cold.
Hence why it’s not a particularly good line of dialogue.
If I was banging Ana de Armas the same day I met her I’d be sending texts too! I don’t think that makes you needy, that makes you a normal penis-owning male!
Seconded!At least it’s better than spending your whole life pining over and wanting to marry someone just because they offered you a dance :/
Yep because all penis owning males wanna dick down ladies. Oi.
He said NORMAL penis-owning male. Homos were excluded by definition I bet you could use your fathands to jerk them off while they whine
Is the action-comedy the new market inefficiency? It seems like streamers are willing to open up the wallet to get big stars for these generic slogs.
> Cole traces it to London, then decides he will be spontaneous for the first time in his life and fly there to surprise her. This despite the fact that he’s never left the country before.Does it explain why he must have already had a passport?
At least in my state you have to get a passport to also get some kind of special farking privilege for you driver’s license. I still don’t get it and didn’t get one.Point still taken, though.
You are probably talking about Real ID, which you need for flying (even domestic) and entering some secure facilities. If I recall correctly, some states satisfy the Real ID requirement with their DL processes, but others don’t, meaning you need to do extra work if you want to fly (of which getting a passport is one solution).(This is based on vague memories and 20-seconds of Google research, so I my not be 100% accurate.)
I think that you’re right. My wallet had just been stolen – a few days before Christmas and I had to apply for a renewed DL while I was at the driving facility. I was pretty flustered and the explanations I was getting weren’t making much sense.
Honestly that seems like on of those plot holes that doesn’t really need an answer. Lots of people who never let the country have passports for various reasons. Maybe he was gonna take a trip to Paris and it fell through?Maybe he says he never left the country but doesn’t count going to Canada or the Caribbean as really “leaving the country”(I’ve known people who didn’t realize the Caribbean is not the US). Any answer to why he has one would be mundane and isn’t needed in a romantic spy action/comedy
> That should have been Pratt, all the way.Parks & Rec-era Pratt, maybe. But we haven’t seen that guy in a long time.
Surprise, surprise! A generic spy-thriller-rom-com movie with predictable plot and dialogues isn’t very good, just like the last 10 of them!
And movie studios wonder why people don’t go to the movies as much?
You’re not Lando in disguise, are you?
I am not the Lando you are looking for
You’re not the Lando I’m looking for…
I should go about my business and move along
They’re putting bad movies on streaming to drive them back to the theaters?
Maybe? I mean that could work ahah
I genuinely wonder if part of the issue here is that Hollywood’s current crop of screenwriters grew up with Leon the Professional and other cool assassin movies, and went straight from college to screenwriting. I.e. never had a real job. So we get endless films where the protagonist is either an architect who never seems to do any work, or an assassin who is somehow not evil.
perhaps! or they all worked in the porn industry before and are used to make 10-15 movies with a single script.
There do seem to be a lot of very forgettable Spy movies starring A list actors that have shown up on steaming over the last few years. It feels like the only a spy movies that work in theaters are Bond or Borne.
and Bourne movies as well. For a time at least.
I feel bad for people who didn’t grow up in NYC or LA where people who look like Evans and De Armas are a daily occurrence.
Also, this movie is shit and that woman deserves a better agent.
Ah here’s our resident dumb thug who only gets hard for black bitches. Black power to your penis! Back to Da Poot plantation
I’ll give you LA but New York not so much.
this is getting some of the worst reviews i’ve seen a movie get lately. can’t wait.
update it’s heinous and not even 1% fun.
I liked the meet cute, but what they do with the characters later is to fail immediately on all the cinema classes.
i’m hoping this will be one of those “so bad, it’s funny” films.
Four screenwriters. Four.
AH hahahaha-haaah…
Considering this movie looks like it could have been written by ChatGPT, it’s impressive they can prove four humans did any writing
Rom Coms are tough and they’re a tough sell. I’m not a fan anyway, but the last one I remember seeing is Enough Said with Julia Louis Dreyfus and James Gandolfini. There’s an unexpected twist that complicates the story in a very uncomfortable way, but it felt more relatable than the dreamy, aspirational, globe-tripping stuff here (and elsewhere). There’s another flick that features an impulsive over-seas search for the object of desire. Where do these people get all of this expendable travel money?
We seem to be reaching de Armas saturation.
We seem to be reaching de Armas saturation.I was gonna comment something about how we need to accept that she stars in bad movies and can’t carry them, but then again there are people who tried really hard to make Sam Worthington a star, and the likes of Liam Hemsworth and Henry Golding get work, so I guess de Armas can continue to make her middling-to-outright-bad movies while being a less charismatic Eiza González.
At Least Jennifer Lawrence really dug into her characters. I hadn’t even heard about her most recent film, Causeway. The trailer looks good.
De Adams Saturation is my new band name
Ay caramba! I’m usually for deporting all illegales but dis culo qualifies for ass-sylum.
Cameos were a surprise. Actors fine ,she is HOT! Script is bad .How do you spend the first have talking about a particular film ,one of the characters has never seen and then have them going to a theater at the end of this film and not have it be that film ????