★★☆☆☆
Common sense tells us that if you cast two incredibly attractive and successful people in a film together, their chemistry should be off the charts and the screen should be in danger of spontaneously combusting just from the sheer sex appeal. AppleTV+’s newest film, Ghosted, proves that wrong.
Chris Evans, aka Captain America himself, plays an infuriatingly naive and rather irritating plant enthusiast and farmer’s market seller Cole who locks eyes with Ana De Armas’ Sadie. After initially disliking each other, they go on to spend the most wonderful day (and night!) together.
Next day, Sadie ghosts Cole. Rather than take the loss, Cole tracks Sadie down in Europe, only to find out that she is a lethal CIA agent, busy saving the world and Cole finds himself in the middle of an international arms deal of sorts.
Credit: AppleTV+
Yes, the premise alone is daft and flawed. Ghosted proves that perspective matters; if Cole wasn’t played by the very handsome Chris Evans and wasn’t framed as a love-hungry puppy dog, he would actually come across as far more creepy.
Similarly, Sadie is only reduced to De Armas’ good looks. Cole keeps saying how she is the most amazing woman he has ever encountered but the audience never really understands what makes her so incredible, especially as her entire personality is boiled down to her job as an agent.
Together, Evans and De Armas simply have no chemistry. It’s quite impressive how director Dexter Fletcher has managed to drain out all the sexiness from a film starring a man once voted the sexiest man alive and the woman who recently played Marilyn Monroe. Fans are even claiming that Evans and Armas weren’t on set together, mostly thanks to the absolutely dreadful green screen work evident in the trailers. Whether or not this is true, Ghosted will go down in film history as a woefully miscast attempt to build a narrative around two attractive people.
The one strength Ghosted does have is how much it plays into Evans’ real life, public image. He has been dubbed the nicest Chris of them all and the film allows him to shed the The Gray Man -style toughness and play the nice guy for a change. Evans admittedly plays the bumbling fool rather well, but Ghosted is so tepid in every other way that it doesn’t matter in the end.
It’s hard to see exactly what went wrong for Fletcher. He previously directed a fan-favourite musical Sunshine on Leith, the adorably good-intentioned Eddie the Eagle and coached a Golden Globe nominated performance out of Taron Edgerton in Rocketman. None of the talent he showcased for storytelling is present in Ghosted. The film’s narrative trudges on, mostly with the power of some truly baffling cameos, but it never amounts to anything even remotely satisfying.
Perhaps Ghosted’s biggest offence is just how dull it is. It’s a story we’ve seen so many times before, but it never finds anything new or exciting to do with its premise. It doesn’t have the style or cheekiness of James Bond nor does it have the charm of Ticket to Paradise.
There are lessons to be learned here; don’t cast a guy best known for playing a literal superhero as a hapless Average Joe and perhaps screen test your stars to ensure they can sell a romance on screen. Ghosted is an abomination of a film; void of any tension or humour, limping forward on a weak idea.
Ghosted is streaming now on AppleTV+.
