SHE SAW
A couple of weeks ago we reviewed the greatest episode of television I’d ever seen. A piece of art that reinvigorated my passion for
the screen and made me vibrate on a higher level. This week that was all undone by Ghosted. Mere minutes in I was starting to question what the point of movies was. I imagined aliens coming down to study humans on Earth and learning that we film ourselves pretending to kill each other while making dumb jokes, and what juvenile, bored, time-wasters they would think we are. If it hadn’t been for that Succession episode, this film may have made me give up on movies altogether. As it stands, television is vastly outperforming film in the creative Olympics.
The film stars Ana de Armas as a CIA operative who’s on a mission to recover a deadly weapon, the Aztec, which has landed in the wrong hands - a ludicrously accented villain played by Adrien Brody. But the mission gets complicated when Chris Evans, a farmer she recently boned, creepily follows her to Europe and becomes inadvertently embroiled in the Aztec recovery. I suppose it’s an action comedy but the jokes are hackneyed and elicit groans not giggles. I don’t think it’s de Armas’ fault but she has been in some real stinkers lately: refer Deep Water and Blonde. The Gray Man, which both she and Evans are in, is eye-rollingly similar to this but at least that film has some visually stunning fight cinematography.
The romance between Evans and de Armas, two very attractive and largely likeable actors, has a complete and inexplicable absence of chemistry. It’s so obviously lacking that the internet has started some conspiracy theories suggesting that the actors didn’t actually film their scenes together and instead filmed it all using body doubles. That seems unlikely but I can understand why audiences are reaching for this as an explanation.
There’s a tremendous number of Hollywood actors who make cameos in this film including John Cho, Ryan Reynolds, Sebastian Stan and Amy Sedaris but not one of them can save it. It’s a real accomplishment to make a comedy in which Sedaris is not funny but director Dexter Fletcher has achieved it. The fact that all these stars signed on to this dreadful film reveals an unpleasant truth about film-making: no one involved really knows if it’s going to be good until it’s finished, by which time it’s too late for the studio to get their money back. The aliens will be laughing heartily at Apple TV for this disastrous investment.
HE SAW
The movie’s climactic fight scene takes place in a restaurant revolving at such high speeds that multiple people are flung out the windows, which is a fittingly ridiculous way to end nearly two hours of mostly unbelievable stupidity. I understand the need in movies of this nature to suspend disbelief, often to dizzying heights, but this movie was so bad that, by the end, I just couldn’t be bothered trying.
There was a point, about halfway through, where Ana de Armas’ character said something I didn’t quite hear. Because this seemed to be an important juncture in the movie, I turned to Zanna and asked what it was, but she hadn’t heard either. At such a point in any other movie, we would have rewound, but the thought that it might be necessary or even useful to hear any of the dialogue in Ghosted was so obviously absurd that neither of us even looked for the remote. Also relevant: our anguish at the thought of extending our time with the movie for even 20 seconds longer than necessary.
The movie’s plot is driven by the strength of the romantic relationship between de Armas’ government assassin and Chris Evans’ dopey farmer, which has something to do with a poorly conceived and excessively dragged-out analogy with a cactus. The two fall for each other in a meet-cute at Evan’s market stall, during the movie’s opening act, which follows all the tropes of a rom-com. I assume I would have liked the rest of the movie better had it continued down that path. Instead, it turns into a hokey action cornfest when Evans – after being ghosted by de Armas – tracks her down without her knowledge and buys a transatlantic plane ticket to meet her, in an act which would be an immediate red flag not just to any real-world potential romantic partner, but to any self-respecting member of the legal profession working the inevitable ensuing court case.
From there, it’s ridiculous revolving restaurants, unbelievable romantic moments and stupid banter all the way down. If you’re looking for positives, the leads are widely considered to be some of the most attractive people in the world right now and lots of other stars make appearances, including Ryan Reynolds and Adrien Brody. If that’s the kind of thing you like, have at it. As for me, I’d prefer to be flung with great force from a rapidly revolving restaurant.
Ghosted is streaming now on Apple TV+.
