New Movie Watch: Ghosted (2023)

Watched:  06/17/2023

Format:  Apple+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dexter Fletcher

What's funny about Ghosted (2023) is that if it came out 25 years ago, this movie would have been a fairly big theatrical hit.  Now it's dumped on Apple+, who immediately cease advertising any movie they own two days after the movie is released.  So, you probably already forgot to watch this one - if you ever considered it - and it's more than likely you forgot it exists.

It's also the sort of thing people used to go see, but now just shrug at, because we've seen a lot of stuff like this since True Lies (in my experience).  If you did see the trailer and thought "I know exactly what this is, so I'm good", you aren't wrong.  It's a movie that feels generated by AI at the script level, and relies entirely on the charm of stars Chris Evans and Ana de Armas - who are both charming as hell.  

If you wonder what happened to Rom-Coms, this is what happened to Rom-Coms.  Minus some high-end action sequences, this is people having a meet-cute, wacky families and friends (while being fairly vanilla themselves), misunderstandings, fighting and falling in love.  Also, the potential end of life in major population centers.

The action sequences borrow from everything you've seen before, but you can't say it's not well executed.  The villains are properly cartoonishly horrible and comfortingly incompetent people.  It's reasonably funny, and has just a sliver of an edge so you don't need to worry that you signed up for something for tweens.  

There *does* seem to be some weirdness to how old Evans is (he turned 42 in June 2023) and how old he's supposed to be in the movie, which seems like early 30's based on the conversation.  I mean, he looks better at 42 than I ever have, so, whatever.  

Of the spy-type-things I've seen of late, there's definitely been an action-comedy element, with varying degrees of each.  I probably preferred The Gray Man for spectacle and same cast, or Falcon and the Winter Soldier for the complexity of the story.  

All in all, it's... ok.  It's what the trailers say it is.  It's not a huge stretch to see Evans playing the milquetoast.  de Armas has already shown her action bona fides.  I've seen worse, but, man, are we in a weird era of very expensive looking movies landing on Apple+ and then never getting discussed out there in the world.