As long as Hollywood has excited, there have been movies that exist mostly to just shove pretty people onscreen and have lavish adventures in jungles and other exotic locations. It’s a tried and true formula and it still has some bright spots here and there in modern times. But there have been far more misses than hits in the adventure movie genre recently, but thankfully “The Lost City” is one that hits more than it misses and at least gets the essentials of the genre right.
The film follows Sandra Bullock (“Speed,” “Ocean’s 8”) as Loretta Sage, an adventure novelist who’s kidnapped by billionaire criminal Abigail Fairfax, played with wide eyed delirium by Daniel Radcliffe (“Miracle Workers,” “Swiss Army Man”), who believes that she can lead him to the hidden city featured in her books. So, the dimwitted cover model from her books, Alan Caprison, played by Channing Tatum (“21 Jump Street,” “Logan Lucky”), decides to set off and rescue her, much to the dismay of her agent Beth, played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph (“Dolemite is My Name,” “People of Earth”).
“The Lost City” lives and dies on its humor, where it thankfully succeeds for a majority of the time. The banter back and forth between Bullock and Tatum is great, with the pair working better as a comedy duo more than a romantic one for a majority of the film. They have the kind of wide-eyed, screwball comedic timing where you can’t tell if either of them are actually incredibly smart or really really stupid. Sure, they’re both riffing on comedic stylings and personas they’ve played before, but they make great foils for each other and the snappy gags and dialogue from writer/directors Aaron and Adam Nee (“The Last Romantic,” “Band of Robbers”) and writers Dana Fox (“Cruella,” “Isn’t It Romantic?”), Oren Uziel (“The Cloverfield Paradox,” “Mortal Kombat (2021)”), and Seth Gordon (“Horrible Bosses,” “Identity Thief”).
Really, the supporting cast ends up outshining the two leads in most situations. Radcliffe is a delirious delight, spouting mad ramblings and innuendo with a straight face and crazy eyes. Randolph is also excellent, playing a straight woman in an otherwise crazy world and doing a delightful job at it. Brad Pitt (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Fight Club”) shows up for an extended cameo sequence that feels so much like straight faced parody that it seems plucked out of a much sillier film. And, of course, there’s Patti Harrison (“Together Together,” “I Think You Should Leave”) who’s becoming more famous for her scene stealing supporting roles than any of her lead actress work.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with “The Lost City” on paper, and in execution most of the film is done well. It avoids the ugly green screen shoddiness seen in recent works like “Death on the Nile” and “Jungle Cruise” by, shockingly, shooting on actual dressed sets and real locations. But, unfortunately, the biggest problem is within the writing on a large scale. When people say, “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” they’re not normally referring to the sets or locations, but thankfully that’s one aspect where “The Lost City” welcomely does “make ‘em like they used to.”
The moment to moment jokes and gags are great, and there’s a sense of momentum and adventure for sure. But the romance is fairly under cooked and isn’t easily bought. So much of the time is spent joking back and forth that there’s hardly any time for actual romance apart from one dance. Likewise, the plot is almost ridiculously cliched, and by the time the third act hits, it's as if everything that the film previously was great at goes out the window. The last twenty-five minutes have the worst, or just least, jokes, there’s some truly bafflingly bad background green screen work, and it goes for an unearned emotional moment that falls flat. It just loses all its momentum and starts to feel boring.
It’s really a shame as Bullock, Tatum, and the rest of the cast are really game. Any sort of genuine screwball comedy traits seem to be mostly squandered under the weight of making a four-quadrant studio hit. To be fair, the film isn’t bad. It’s quite enjoyable, if not particularly memorable, for a majority of its runtime, and it manages to be the kind of movie we don’t see very often: an adventure that just wants to have fun and that’s pretty much it. It’s just a shame that so much of that fun gets bogged down in elements that either don’t work or just aren’t needed. 3/5
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