Much has been made of the resurgence of the romantic comedy, but perhaps we haven’t discussed enough the rise of an important subgenre: the action rom-com. Hollywood has produced some winners in its history, but flicks like The Lost City and Shotgun Wedding have been keeping the tradition alive lately. Now, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas are joining the canon (and contributing to their own canon of film team-ups) with Ghosted on Apple TV+, premiering April 21.
Ghosted is like Mr. And Mrs. Smith except one of them’s not a spy, or more accurately a reverse Knight And Day (de Armas is the Tom Cruise super-spy and Evans is the Cameron Diaz hapless civilian accidentally drawn into the other’s schemes; bonus points for also being from Boston). In any case, it’s two beautiful people making quips and punching bad guys. Plus, Amy Sedaris is in it! What more can you ask for?
Playing against type, Evans is a lovesick loser who decides to drop everything and pull a “grand romantic gesture” for a woman with whom he’s been on one date and then never responded to any of his many, many texts. (“No no, she didn’t ghost me, she just doesn’t have an international calling plan,” he insists. Sir, iMessage is still free on WiFi overseas.) De Armas is a sexy, enigmatic badass apparently known as “The Tax Man” (a role that previously belonged to Scarlett Johansson). She’s being hunted by Adrien Brody, who sets “every bounty hunter on the continent” after her. (Remember when it was Evans doing that to de Armas and Ryan Gosling in The Gray Man? Ah, memories.)
Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and Spider-Man scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel here, but Ghosted seems guaranteed to be an easy, high-octane good time. At the very least, this trailer has provided us with the image of Evans in disheveled formal attire, dukes up, saying, “I’m the boyfriend.” Swooning fans will dine out on that one for a long time. Let’s hope Ghosted does justice to the action rom-com revival.