Ghosted (Apple TV +)
Rating: 0 stars
Just as there are laws against squandering water and fuel in many countries, there should be laws against the kind of paychecks that A-list stars in Bollywood and Hollywood carry home for doing practically nothing.
For, nothing is what Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, two insanely beautiful stars looking lost in the creepy chaos of stalking and binge-assaulting the audiences’ senses with nonsense, seems to have signed up for.
Did they even read the script? Did they know what they were getting into? Or were the zeros on their paycheques all they could see?
The sad part of this vulgar piece of jejune anaemic cinema is that both the leads are capable of good acting. But hell, what can they do when they have nothing to fall back on except their own charm? It’s like Arijit Singh being told to sing into a trashcan.
There is absolutely no room for any kind of creative discourse in this cauldron of nothingness which starts with Evans and Armis hooking up for a day and not of carnal pleasures. Funnily their love making interlude is so chaste it looks like they have signed up for a full-body MRI rather than full-bodied sex.
Sadie(de Armis) disappears after this daylong date.Maybe the vegetarian sex clinched it. But off she went .And so, I suggest, should the audience before it is too late. Sucker that we are for goodlooking people colliding and collapsing in a heap of mutual passion, we refuse to heed early signs of braindead writing and chug on to see what waits for us next in this hideous display of cinematic anarchy.
Cole(Evans) refuses to listen to his wise parents end even wiser sister(a superb Lizze Broadway)and flies off to London to track down Sadie. He carries a cactus plant as a peace offering(it is supposed to be a joke), gets mugged in a dark corner and is tortured by a villain who looks suspiciously like Adrien Brody.
Surprise surprise, it is Brody!! What got into him? Bills to pay, perhaps? The love story between Cole and Sadie is forgotten while we are treated to one action piece after another. The one in a speeding bus in Pakistan(?) gets the prize for being the most over-the-top.
The self-congratulatory tone and tempo of the action is not the least impressive. Armis playing Evans’ protector is meant to be a cool gender reversal in the action genre. Evans seems to enjoy being mollycoddled. But the couple is so mismatched they look like Will Smith and Jaden Smith after the Oscarslap.
Every now and then some character has to remind them, “You two should get a room.”
And do what? Fight some more? The PG stuff that Armis and Evans pass off as passion is as sizzling as an ice cream cone melting in the sun. Ghosted is the movie equivalent of a blind date botched up by a restaurant that serves only vegetarian food to incurable meat eaters.
Avoid Ghosted like the plague.Even the plague is preferable. At least it causes some sensation.
