Ghosted review: Ana de Armas, Chris Evans action rom-com has a big surprise

GhostedThe film stars Chris Evans with Ana de Armas. Knives OffYou can also find out more about the following: Grey Man(), is an ultra-lightweight film. The fact that it’s slick, slight, and frequently ridiculous isn’t necessarily a problem, any more than it was a problem for The Lost City The following are some examples of how to use Bullet Train — it’s an easy evening’s entertainment, a casual brain-relaxer that doesn’t require anything out of the audience except complete intellectual remove and a thorough willingness to set reality aside for a couple of hours. But there’s only one right way to watch it, and most people won’t, because it isn’t exactly easy to do. Enjoy it the best you can Ghosted To be completely blind is to enter the room.

It is one of the main things that make Rocket Man director Dexter Fletcher’s action rom-com so light is that there are barely any twists or surprises to the thing. The biggest one comes in the first act, and it’s baked into the premise of the movie — it’s in every description of the film, and even in its tagline. And it’s something that’s far better discovered by watching the movie than by reading about it ahead of time. It’s a big reveal, much like that of the antagonist in Terminator 2The one twist GhostedIt was revealed in marketing material from the very beginning. This is unfortunate because the movie had been designed so that it would be hidden and only reveal itself at the right moment to maximize the impact.

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For viewers who’ve managed to stay unspoiled, it’s enough to say that the movie centers on two people — Cole (Chris Evans) and Sadie (Ana de Armas) — who meet at a farmer’s market, have an unpleasantly waspish conversation that doesn’t register as flirting until someone else explains that they were flirting, and then go on a much more pleasant The Sun Rises/Rye LaneAfter that, they learn more about each other than they bargained for. Their banter goes back to sour and snarky throughout the film. They discover more than they expected and the banter returns to snarky and sour for much of this film.

To the degree that anyone’s going to be talking about Ghosted a week from now, it’ll probably be about the snide, scoldy aspects of ColeYou can also find out more about the following: Sadie’s relationship, which the four-man screenwriting team — Deadpool and Spiderhead writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers — seem to hope will play as adorably edgy. Ha ha! (These two attractive people hate each other to the extent of verbally attacking, gaslighting and manipulating each other. It’s so cute! They’re definitely going to end up together!) Instead, it becomes a weird game of “Who’s more wrong in this scene?”

It’s hard to take sides in this particular face-off, given how the central couple is portrayed. Cole, easily one of the least convincing movie farmers to ever humbly man a farmers-market organic greens stall, is utterly under the sway of his weirdly over-involved family (Tate Donovan and Amy Sedaris as his parents, Lizze Broadway as his way-too-up-in-his-love-life teenage sister). He’s also needy, pushy, whiny, prone to terrible decisions, and full of excuses for all of the above. Sadie is an assortment of contradictions with sharp tongues, which barely make up a cohesive character. The fact that they both accurately and insightfully recognize each other’s flaws and call them out doesn’t make them any more appealing — if anything, it’s a little embarrassing that they both immediately see each other so clearly.

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The movie’s saving grace is that none of this is presented as particularly consequential, or meant to be taken at face value. A Wilhelm scream in the movie’s first major action sequence is a tipoff that the filmmakers think it’s all pretty goofy. Reese’s and Wernick’s opening sequence from The First is an example of a scene they essentially stole from each other. DeadpoolCole is greeted by a generic mook in ultra-slow-mo, who has been separated from his car and is now flying into the sky to his impending death. So is Adrien Brody’s Fronch top ovair zee as Leveque, the movie’s main baddie. It’s a formulaic rom-com with a few action elements, and a lot of comfort and ease. But no one should care what happens.

Instead, GhostedEvans is having fun playing the tagalong while de Armas takes turns spinning and shooting her way around the sequences. (“I swallowed a rock,” he moans after one rough tumble down a hill.) The film also fills the space with cameos — another reason to go into the movie blind, so every familiar face popping up can be a surprise. At times, the movie plays like a class reunion with a loose narrative, a dynamic that adds to the breeziness without messing with the film’s already-dubious reality.

It’s true that there are many good reasons for people to not be interested in watching a film so uninteresting, this ironic and tongue-in mouth, or this uncommitted. That’s all the more reason for anyone who does want to watch it to go in unburdened by expectations. There isn’t a lot to GhostedThe only thing that was enjoyable about the film, aside from seeing some charming actors play fetch-the McGuffin in a thin storyline, were their comedic antics. They all seem to have shown up as if this was a casual playdate, a fun time that they didn’t need to prep and plan for in advance. They will be entertained GhostedIf they adopt the same strategy, then more will be gained.

GhostedApple TV Plus is now offering streaming.