There’s only one right way to watch Ghosted

Ghostedthe third film starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas (after Knives out And The gray man), is a feather-light film. The fact that it’s slick, light, and often ridiculous isn’t necessarily a problem, any more than it was a problem for The Lost City or Bullet train – it’s an easy evening entertainment, a casual brain relaxer that requires nothing from the audience except complete intellectual removal and a thorough willingness to put reality aside for a few hours. But there’s only one right way to look at it, and most people won’t, because it’s not exactly an easy thing to do. The best way to enjoy Ghosted is to go in completely blind.

One of the things that makes Rocketman Director Dexter Fletcher’s action rom-com is so light that there are hardly any twists or surprises in it. The biggest comes in the first act, and it’s ingrained in the premise of the movie – it’s in every description of the movie, and even in the tagline. And it’s something that can be discovered much better by watching the film than by reading about it beforehand. Like the big reveal about the villain of Valve 2one twist in it Ghosted was spoiled in the marketing materials from the start, which is a shame considering how clearly the movie was designed to hide it and reveal it at the right time for maximum impact.

For viewers who have managed to stay pristine, suffice it to say that the film revolves around two people – Cole (Chris Evans) and Sadie (Ana de Armas) – who meet at a farmer’s market, have an unpleasant wasp-like conversation that doesn’t register as flirting until someone else explains they were flirting, then move on in a much more pleasant way Before sunrise/Rye Lanestyle extended walk-and-talk date. After that, they find out more about each other than they bargained for, and their banter goes back to sour and snarky for most of the movie, between noisy, often clumsy CG-assisted action sequences.

To the extent that someone is going to talk about it Ghosted in a week it will probably be about the vile, name-calling aspects of Cole and Sadie’s relationship, which the four-person screenwriting team — deadpool And spider head writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers – seem to be hoping they’ll play just as cutely tense. (Ha ha, these two beautiful people really hate each other, to the point of gaslighting, manipulating and verbally attacking! So cute! They will definitely end up together!) Instead, it becomes a weird game of “Who is more wrong in this scene?”

It’s hard to pick sides in this particular confrontation given the way the central pair are portrayed. Cole, easily one of the least convincing movie farmers ever to humbly man an organic vegetable stall at the farmers’ market, is utterly under the sway of his curiously overburdened family (Tate Donovan and Amy Sedaris as his parents, Lizze Broadway as his manner). 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, for her part, is a collection of sharp contradictions that hardly form a coherent character together. The fact that they accurately and insightfully recognize and speak out each other’s flaws doesn’t make them any more attractive – in fact, it’s a little embarrassing that they both see each other so clearly right off the bat.

The film’s saving grace is that none of this is presented as particularly consistent, or meant to be taken at face value. A Wilhelm scream in the film’s first major action sequence is a hint that the filmmakers think it’s all pretty wacky. So is a moment that Reese and Wernick essentially cradle themselves from the opening of the first deadpool, where a generic mook, separated from his vehicle and flying through the air to his imminent death, transitions into ultra-slow-mo to make desperate, wide-eyed eye contact with Cole. So is Adrien Brody’s ovary-sea-top Fronch accsont as Leveque, the film’s main villain. This is a rom-com, formal and comforting and light-hearted, with some action trappings, but without the expectation of anyone having to worry about the results of that action.

Instead of, Ghosted fills the room with friendly robbery, as the Armas spin kicks and blasts his way through sequence after sequence, while Evans seems to be having a good time playing the hapless tagalong. (“I swallowed a rock,” he groans after a rough fall down a hill.) The movie also fills the room with cameos — another reason to go into the movie blind, so that any familiar face that pops up can be a surprise . At times, the film plays out like a class reunion with loose narration, a dynamic that adds to the lightness without messing with the film’s already questionable reality.

Yes, there are plenty of reasons why people might not want to deal with a movie this lax, this tongue-in-cheek irony, this one uncommitted to its own weight. That is all the more reason for those who do want to look at it to go inside carefree. There’s not much to it Ghosted, aside from watching some charismatic actors fumble around with their images in comically enjoyable ways, playing fetch-the-McGuffin over a thin and implausible storyline. They all seem to have turned up as if this were a casual play date, a fun time that they didn’t have to prepare and plan in advance. Viewers will enjoy Ghosted more if they follow the same approach.

Ghosted now streaming on Apple TV Plus.