Ana de Armas and Chris Evans are onscreen together for a third time, and on their newest project they’re jumping to a new streaming service for the Apple TV+ rom-com adventure flick Ghosted. After appearing in Netflix’s Knives Out and The Gray Man, the leading duo will actually be a couple — or hopeful couple, at least — in the new movie; Evans’ Cole Turner tracks down de Armas’ Sadie Rhodes after being ghosted by her, only to find himself in way over his head. Reviews are in for Ghosted, which is available for streaming now with an Apple TV+ subscription, so let’s see if this is worth checking out this weekend.
Chris Evans is no Captain America in this movie, and he’s said it was fun to play someone far less cool. Meanwhile, Ana de Armas replaced Scarlett Johansson — Evans’ MCU co-star — when she had to exit the movie, so de Armas will get to use those James Bond skills as CIA agent Sadie. Let’s see what the critics are saying, starting with CinemaBlend’s sister site GameRadar’s review of Ghosted. Jamie Graham gives the movie 3 out of 5 stars, saying the lead actors make this one worth watching, even if the action leaves something to be desired. The critic continues:
The various fisticuffs, gun battles and vehicular chases kind of hit the required notes, though it’s hard not to think of Cole and Sadie visiting a karaoke bar during their date – the non-stop carnage across numerous exotic locales feels like a cover version, fun but forgettable. An overabundance of CGI certainly doesn’t help, removing all soul. And peril.
David Erhlich of Indiewire grades the movie a C-, calling it “insultingly bland,” and saying by the time the movie starts playing on your screen, it’s already been half-forgotten. He continues:
The paint-by-numbers action-comedy that Ghosted unpacks from that premise asks so little of its audience that Sadie should probably date it. This movie has no interest in anything more than a casual relationship with its audience, as it reliably stifles a joke or kills the mood the moment it suspects that you might be about to catch feelings.
Nick Schager of The Daily Beast pulls no punches with Ghosted, calling the movie the worst movie of the year, by far. The critic argues that rarely have two such charismatic stars generated fewer sparks than Ana de Armas and Chris Evans, in part because the script “falls flat with every line of dialogue.” The review continues:
Ghosted is a big-budget, star-studded action-romance premiering on Apple TV+ Apr. 21, although a more fitting destination for it would be a dark closet on a high shelf where no one might ever find it. Featuring not a single convincing element or exchange, this fiasco plays like a wannabe-Knight and Day exercise in eliciting annoyed reactions: groans for its awful one-liners, exclamations for its moronic plot twists, and eyerolls for its terrible CGI and desperate cameos. It feels like ChatGPT wrote it, and the fact that it didn’t is all the more damning for those who did.
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle takes issue with the subgenre overall that promotes the idea of self-actualization through murder. The critic says this is not a movie to see, pointing out that Cole becomes the man he always could have been after Sadie teaches him to fight and kill. The review concludes:
To say the least, this seems like a perversion of the traditional romantic formula. The implicit idea behind virtually all movie romances is that love is an education that forces people to expand. In Ghosted, the vehicle for this expansion is violence and mass murder. In a farce context, or a satirical context, or a dark comic context, that might work. But Ghosted has a light tone and a heavy body count. It’s perky and cute — and has piles of dead bodies. As such, it’s distasteful. It has pretty people in it, but it’s an ugly movie.
Luke Y. Thompson of the AV Club gives Ghosted a D+ and was among the critics who compared it unfavorably to great romantic action movies like Romancing the Stone, only gender-swapped. From the review:
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.
The critics may not have enjoyed Ghosted, particularly the CGI and script, but audiences should always feel free to decide for themselves. If this sounds like a movie you’re interested in checking out, you can do so now on Apple TV+. Also be sure to check out our 2023 Movie Release Schedule to see what other movies are coming soon to the big screen and streaming.
