The Lost City

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C+

              In many ways, The Lost City is a throwback. Perhaps most notably, it is a medium-budgeted film that isn’t based on an existing intellectual property. That alone put it in my good graces as I entered the theater. It is also a star-driven comedy, something that has become almost extinct in the last ten years, and a romantic adventure film, which hasn’t been particularly fashionable since the 80s. The most obvious comparison is Romancing the Stone (and the movie literally references Stone in a couple of clever and subtle ways), as both films are a blend of romantic comedy and a treasure-hunting caper. The Lost City makes an admirable attempt to capture the spirit of Stone (and 80s adventure films in general) and succeeds as passable entertainment, but never quite captures the charm of its inspirations.

               Sandra Bullock stars as Loretta Sage, a romance novelist that aspires to write something greater than the softcore paperbacks that have made her famous. She reluctantly agrees to do a media tour to promote her new novel and is joined by Alan Caprison (played by Channing Tatum), the model that serves as the real-world embodiment of Loretta’s leading man character (he’s playing the equivalent of Fabio from the 90s; a paperback cover model designed to give bored women something to think about as they sit in a bubble bath, drink wine and wonder what happened to their 20s). Loretta is kidnapped by billionaire Abigail Fairfax (played by Daniel Radcliffe) who believes that the research in Loretta’s novels is the real-world key to finding a lost treasure. Fairfax sends Loretta and Alan off on a jungle adventure to decipher some clues and retrieve the treasure for him.

               Plot is not exactly this film’s strong suit and audiences will not be confusing Loretta’s adventure with the more developed storytelling of Indiana Jones’ quests anytime soon. Honestly, there was a point in the third act when I realized that I had completely forgotten why these characters were in the jungle and what they were searching for. Even when they found the desired artifact, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was and didn’t particularly care. The movie didn’t seem to particularly care either, as the screenwriters seemingly threw in a goal for our main characters as an afterthought. On paper, The Lost City had to read as an incredibly generic script.

               Given the uninspired story, The Lost City is banking on audiences caring far more about the journey than the destination, leaving the film’s success entirely in the hands of the two lead actors. That plan partially works. Loretta and Alan are thin characters, but Bullock and Tatum have enough natural charm that they manage to squeeze more life out of the script than it deserves. They have great chemistry together and their ability to play off of each other is what carries the film and kept me marginally invested rather than just wishing that I was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark instead. Bullock also looks like she has aged ten years in the last thirty years, so props to her for that. Radcliffe also brings his A-game to C-list material, playing an incredibly generic billionaire adventurer villain with a horde of henchmen (I always wondered how these villains do their payroll taxes, but I digress). This part was written as the most forgettable of forgettable Bond villains, but Radcliffe brings enough manic energy to the role to make it more entertaining than it has any right to be. One wonders what such major stars saw in this script, but they do their damndest to elevate it into the realm of acceptable mediocrity.

               The most distracting problem with The Lost City is that it turns into a pretty damn fun movie for the twenty minutes or so that Brad Pitt shows up. Pitt plays an unhinged CIA operative that aids our heroes early in their quest and it becomes immediately apparent that this character should have been the focus of the movie. Pitt is having a frigging ball in this movie, chewing scenery like a starving man, and his scenes are so over the top that they overshadow everything else in the film. This character needs his own movie, and his quick departure here only emphasizes how incredibly “meh” the rest of the film is.

               I actually misunderstood the trailer for The Lost City, as I expected it to be more akin to Jumanji (the one with The Rock) with fantasy elements as the author’s romantic novels came to life. I didn’t get any of the fantasy elements, but the actors often seemed to be emulating the over-the-top characterizations of the video game characters from Jumanji in an attempt to liven things up. It’s almost as if the actors were trying to overperform and improve the script through sheer willpower, which is admirable if not completely successful. Despite those efforts, The Lost City is little more than a moderately fun flick to throw on during a lazy afternoon and then be promptly forgotten. That was my way of using 836 words to say that it’s fine.

Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_City_(2022_film)#/media/File:TheLostCityPoster.jpg