Review: 'Ghosted' Is A Rom-Com Without Rom Or Com

Chris Evans and Ana de Armas in "Ghosted," premiering April 21, 2023 on Apple TV+.

Getting ghosted sucks. That’s a universal truth that becomes more painful every time it happens. That truth is the catalyst for the plot of Ghosted, the latest film from Rocketman and Eddie the Eagle director Dexter Fletcher. Ghosted follows Cole (Chris Evans), a down-to-earth farmer whose lack of success in the romantic field has come from his neediness and tendencies to be high maintenance. Cole is in the midst of getting over a recent breakup when he’s running a booth at a local farmer’s market when Edna (Victoria Kelleher), who runs the flower booth across the lane, goes off to get high, leaving Cole temporarily in charge of her booth. Enter Sadie (Ana de Armas), a confident shopper in search of a flower to bring warmth to her empty home. She and Cole get into an argument regarding what plant she should be allowed to buy, considering how much time she spends out of the country, culminating in Edna selling Sadie the flower she intended to buy. When Cole realizes that there were flirtatious undertones to his argument with Sadie, he tracks her down in the parking lot and leaves with her on a day’s-long date. Unfortunately for Cole, Sadie doesn’t connect with him the next day, leading him to send 11 (technically seven because emojis don’t count) texts to her, to which she doesn’t respond, leaving him Ghosted. When Cole realizes she has his inhaler in her bag, he tracks it to London, where he gets captured by enemy spies, is mistaken for “the Taxman,” and finds himself in caught in international awaiting rescue from Sadie, who happens to be a CIA operative.

Chris Evans and Ana de Armas in "Ghosted," premiering April 21, 2023 on Apple TV+.

As far as rom-coms go, Ghosted isn’t particularly romantic or comedic. A good romantic comedy relies on strong, undeniable chemistry between its two leads, and that’s just not the case here. While each performer (Evans and de Armas) is perfectly fine as leads on their own, they just don’t work well as a couple. As individuals, Chris Evans is the clear standout of the two (not to put de Armas’ performance lower than his, but she doesn’t have the same screen presence as him), being a perfect damsel-in-distress with an excellent delivery of “I’m a farmer!” The hardest thing to accept about Evans’ performance is that he’s trying to convince us that he is, in fact, the damsel-in-distress in this situation, even though we know that there’s a super soldier underneath that farmer’s skin. For de Armas, the challenge comes in perfecting the “badassery” that’s part of playing a spy — there’s a certain sense of calmness and confidence that’s missing from her character. That said, it’s slightly unfair to nitpick the ins and outs of the characters and their personalities, as this is a rom-com and not much more than that. On the comedic side, the film fails to write a single joke that is remotely funny. It shocks me that this is a real movie written by real people, and not an AI-created cash grab from studio executives who get their ideas from TikTok. There are four individuals credited with writing Ghosted, and none of them are Chat-GPT. Either they’re lying, or something was way off in that writer’s room because the film is severely lacking any originality.

For the most part, Ghosted is average. It doesn’t do anything extraordinary and certainly doesn’t do anything inventive for its genre, but if you’re a fan of either of its leads and are looking for a generally entertaining watch, I’d say it’s worth watching. That said, the film’s biggest flaw is its pacing. It takes what should be a 90-100 minute movie and stretches it to a 2-hour runtime, which really needs a boost of energy in its second act. The film’s second hour is surprisingly well-paced, but it’s the first hour that drags. Ghosted simply doesn’t have much to offer, and can’t be carried by its leads, and is failed by its writing. When the best part of a movie is Chris Evans whining about doing action movie things because he’s a farmer, something is clearly wrong. However, Chris Evans starring in rom-coms is a good thing, and is something we need more of.

Ghosted streams exclusively on Apple TV+ on April 21.