Don’t waste your bullets on this mess.
“Ghosted” is the third film to have Chris Evans and Ana de Armas after the brilliant whodunit “Knives Out” and the awful action thriller “The Grey Man.” In my perspectives, they we’re better off being enemies in “Knives Out,” then they are as a would-be romantic couple in which the man is an ordinary guy and the woman is a secret CIA agent. And as with any adventure romcom, they have the argue over and over again.
I like to consider this movie in the analogy of the tagline of Sour Patch Kids, but with two words switched. You know the “Sour Sweet Gone” line. Only in “Ghosted’s” case, it’s “Sweet Sour Gone” over and over again. That means it starts off sweet and then sour and then sweet and then sour, and finally, it’s gone.
Evans stars as a hopeless romantic named Cole Turner, who lives in his parents’ guesthouse, works on their family farm, got out of a bad relationship, and immediately falls in love with Sadie Rhodes (de Armas). They start off arguing, he apologizes for his introduction, she forgives him, they have a coffee, and end up spending the whole day together. He thinks she could be the one. That’s why he keeps texting her over and over again, hoping she’ll respond. It’s conceivable, though, that she ghosted him. Hence the title.
He has an inhaler, which can be tracked by an iPhone, and which he left in Sadie’s purse. That’s when he learns she’s in London, and that’s when his parents (Tate Donovan and Amy Sederis) suggest he surprise her. His sister Mattie (Lizze Broadway) thinks he’s crazy, especially since he hasn’t even left America. And what I think is crazy, Donovan still has a youthful voice, and so, he seems too young to be the father of a 41-year-old man like Evans. He seems more like a best friend n my perspective, and he was a nice guy when I met him.
Cole ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, because he gets drugged by a villains, who think he’s somebody going by the pseudonym “Taxman.” That’s when Sadie saves his butt, when he learns she’s a CIA agent, and when they begin arguing, and when they deal with both bounty hunters (guest stars Anthony Mackie, John Cho, and Sebastian Stan) and an arms dealer (Adrien Brody), who plans to sell the deadly weapon they hold.
It does look fun when Evans is hanging on for dear life on a bus that de Armas hijacks to fight some villains and it takes place on the edge of a cliff. And when these two aren’t arguing, they have their tender moments. But when their tender moments are over, it’s basically the same thing happening over again. I expected Kevin Hart to play the kind of guy who would be in the wrong place at the wrong time (especially after he failed to make me laugh with “The Man from Toronto”), but not Evans.
I expected better from “Rocketman” director Dexter Fletcher, “Deadpool” screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and “Spider-Man: Homecoming screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. They have have done better and can do better, as well as Evans, de Armas, and the big names on this casting list. But “Ghosted” takes the most obvious approaches to a romcom action movie. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” knew the stakes of the genre, thanks to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. And at least Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston had some chemistry in “Murder Mystery 2,” but that’s not really saying much. We do not need a “Ghosted 2.”
Streaming on AppleTV+
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