Yes, I had seen the trailer for this Apple TV movie Ghosted a few weeks ago, and thought it looked really, remarkably, bad in a "streaming service does boring formulaic crap we've seen 20 times before but hopes we won't notice because of the big star" kind of way.
And this review of it in The Guardian confirms my impression was accurate:
Ghosted is content dictated by algorithm at its absolute, industry-shaming worst, so carelessly and lifelessly cobbled together that we’re inclined to believe it’s the first film created entirely by AI. It’s almost avant-garde in its all-consuming awfulness, made with sheer contempt for the usual base staples one expects from a movie, head-shakingly shambolic on all fronts. It’s smug elevator pitch over plot – a guy gets ghosted by a woman who ends up being a secret agent – and while the early inevitable trailer scenes that take us to the end of this logline are bad enough they’re nowhere near as bad as what follows....
...The death of the movie star has been greatly overstated but the pairing of Evans and Armas (previously seen in Knives Out and The Gray Man) is so disastrously misjudged, it does make one seriously question what the industry now thinks a star is and what we as an audience are expected to accept from them. Like last year’s similarly wretched Red Notice, which saw Ryan Reynolds, the Rock and Gal Gadot all compete to see who could be the least charismatic actor on screen, it’s as actively uncomfortable for us as it appears to be for them (a scene of the pair kissing on a beach is so glumly reticent that it seems as though it was performed at gunpoint). It’s not as if the ChatGPT-level script gives them much of anything to work with (“You thought you met a hottie, not a Mata Hari!” is an almost impressively heinous attempt at a zinger) but well-paid stars of this calibre should be able to bring more of an uplift; they’re stilted when they should be sleek.
Amusingly, the headline for the Indie Wire review reads:
‘Ghosted’ Review: At Least It’s Shorter Than ‘The Gray Man’
Yes: I had to give up on The Gray Man - it was awful in what sounds like pretty much exactly the same way.
4 comments:
If you want to see Bod Odenkirk(Better Call Saul, Nobody) in a different role try Lucky Hank. It isn't a rapid paced comedy, more character driven, in the unusual setting of an English Dept of a low grade USA university. Worth a look. I've enjoyed it so far.
I enjoyed the Korean movie, Believer, a crime cum mystery movie. Rather violent, Korean movies often are.
The Gray Man was appalling rubbish.
"Rather violent, Korean movies often are."
Yeah, the Japanese and Korean thing for graphic fictional violence puts me off watching a lot of their content. Same with anime. I'm not sure why violence done graphically/grotesquely has become such a thing in those countries.
Have you watched the series Barry (on Binge in Australia). I commented on it at the end of the first series, and expressed doubts about whether I would continue with series 2 and 3, but I did. I guess I have gotten used to the darkness, and it is consistently (very blackly) funny. I was going to write another post about it, and may still do. (The last season has just started in America.)
I enjoyed Barry. Rare example of a different approach that works well. Some hilarious scenes.
Thanks for the Barry reminder. I've rewatched some episodes. Noho Hank is a wonderful character!
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