Courtesy, Apple TV+

Movie Review: Ghosted

07:00 April 27, 2023
By: David Vicari

Ghosted wants to be that action-adventure-romantic-comedy where opposites attract like Romancing the Stone (1984), but unfortunately it's more like the lousy The Lost City (2022). The frustrating thing is that this should have worked with ease. It has two very likable stars, Ana de Armas and Chris Evans, and a good director in Dexter Fletcher (Eddie the Eagle, Rocketman).

Ghosted starts off with a meet cute as farmer and writer Cole (Evans) refuses to sell a plant to the apparently irresponsible Sadie (de Armas). They bicker but eventually decide to spend the day together. Days later, the romantically needy Cole sends text after text to Sadie which go unanswered. Is she "ghosting" him by not responding to his messages? Cole manages to track Sadie to London, and that is where the movie becomes an spy thriller with a sneering Adrien Brody as the villain. You see, Sadie is CIA and the bad guys think Cole has the passcode they want.

Evans and de Armas are likable actors, and they played off each other well in Knives Out. You do see some of that chemistry here in Ghosted, but it kind of wanes when their characters start constantly screaming at each other.

Evans' character comes off as only mildly neurotic, but to make the comedy really work he needed to be full on neurotic. Also, despite having some funny lines, de Armas plays a character who isn't very likable.

Besides the dull characters, the cliched action spy plot is yawn inducing, and constantly having pop tunes play over the action scenes is obnoxious.

A clue that the original concept of the film was compromised is that two pairs of writers (Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick and Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers) are credited with the screenplay. The probable scenario was this: The first writing team delivered an original screenplay, but producers/studio executives thought the script could be even better, so another set of writers were brought in to enhance it only to make it a convoluted mess. Too many cooks is probably also why Ghosted never has a consistent tone.

Ghosted is streaming on Apple TV+.

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