Apple TV Plus debuted its much-anticipated rom-com/action film Ghosted today. Starring Chris Evans and Ana De Armas, Ghosted tells the story of Cole, who follows his girlfriend to London after she ghosts him and cuts off all contact, only to find that Sadie, the mysterious art curator he met earlier, is instead a CIA agent. Entangled in a web of spy work, Cole and Sadie soon find themselves on the run as a result of her real profession.
The premise and the star-studded cast that features two fan favorites appeared to offer a fun ride. However, the initial reviews of the movie suggest that it might not be the case. Ghosted has premiered to some brutally crushing initial reviews with words that do not exactly suggest it’s a film worth the audience’s time.
Describing Ghosted as the “worst movie of the year, by far,” Daily Beast’s Obsessed tagged the movie with its infamous ‘Skip This’ emblem. Calling it out for its lack of convincing elements and inconsistent twists, the review said,
“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.”
Further downgrading the movie, the reviewer despised its writing and tone, saying,
“It feels like ChatGPT wrote it, and the fact that it didn’t is all the more damning for those who did.”
The Guardian takes further digs at the big-budget creative team behind Ghosted, which includes the Deadpool and Spider-Man writers, and finds a fantastic director in Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman). The review mentions how the names attached to Ghosted attract many audiences to the star-pairing venture. However, nothing about it is worth the hype the movie creates. The Guardian reviewer wrote,
“It’s utterly impossible to see the appeal of Ghosted, the movie, a staggeringly, maddeningly atrocious heap of increasingly boneheaded decisions that will act as depressing documentation of just how rotten things got in the current oversaturated streaming landscape.”
Writing for Next Best Picture, Cody Dericks says that it’s the old Hollywood idea of putting together an attractive on-screen pair that can’t work anymore without substantial work on the script. He suggests that even with Chris Evans and Ana De Armas, the lack of spark in the narrative and their on-screen chemistry causes the movie to fail miserably, rendering it unsatisfactory.
“Like an unclean pool, Hollywood has a chemistry problem. Too many movies simply put two unfathomably attractive people at the center and hope their beauty will compensate for any lack of sizzle, which simply doesn’t work. “Ghosted” is the latest allegedly romantic film to make its way to streamers, and the sparkless dynamic between its stars, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, is only one of its problems. It’s an underwhelming and visually unappealing action-romantic-comedy that won’t fully satisfy fans of those three genres.”
Further showing an equal disappointment, Variety wrote that the film is an example of unworthy escapism into an overstuffed and ‘overbaked’ romantic comedy. The review bluntly addresses the failed attempt at blending several genres in Ghosted, which lacks originality and even precision in its inspirations.
“Fight scenes out of a Jason Statham movie but staged with far less precision. An arbitrary series of international settings. An espionage-thriller plot that’s just convoluted yet inconsequential enough to be thoroughly annoying. And a romantic connection between the two stars that doesn’t so much grow and develop as metastasize and get trampled.”
Ghosted isn’t aggregated enough to have a Rotten Tomatoes score yet, but the initial consensus that’s forming is asking you to ‘ghost’ the movie altogether. Strangely, such established names involved weren’t enough to redeem the film, not just in the star cast but also in the creative unit – all backed by a high budget and wide distributor.
Now the only thing left to counter these reviews is the audience score. More often, it’s been noticed that the critical consensus and that of the audience differ significantly. It’s been seen in the most widely appreciated films and those that have suffered the audience’s wrath on social media. Will Ghosted rise to the same ranks? Time will tell.