Mark Reviews Movies: THE LOST CITY (2022)

The Lost City, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 24, 2022

Once again, a comedy that relies on the gimmick of its premise and the charms of its leads is only worth those two things. With The Lost City, we have a fairly clever (if a tad bit familiar) setup and carrying it as far as they possibly can are a couple of movie stars playing it safely silly.

The two stars are Sandra Bullock, playing a writer of romance novels who ends up in a jungle adventure that could have been in one of her books, and Channing Tatum, as an adventurer of sorts. Before you stop because you're sure you've heard this one already, the "of sorts" of Tatum's character is that he's the cover model for the adventurer character in the books. In other words, he's not actually a real hero of any kind.

Based on the characters' shared lack of experience in matters of survival and treasure hunting, there's a good amount of comedic potential for the mishaps and misadventures of this stumbling, bumbling duo. As has become the trend of modern comedy out of Hollywood, though, the screenwriting quartet responsible for this one only have a few ideas, repeat and spread them out with the distraction of some side players, and hope the actors can charm and improvise their way into making us ignore how slim the material is. Bullock and Tatum are in game enough form here to make us wish we could watch the version of this movie that didn't count on them to carry the whole thing on their shoulders.

Bullock plays Loretta, the romance fiction writer, who is still mourning the death of her husband five years prior and hesitant to leave her home. The two were archeologists by trade, and she has taken that career experience and transformed it into the sex-filled adventures of a treasure hunter and her chiseled, gender-studies-degree-possessing hunk of a fellow adventurer. Her latest novel, which was a slog to finish, might very well be her last, too, as she announces to a crowd of fans.

They're more interested in seeing Tatum's Alan, a dim-bulb model who has portrayed Loretta's far-more-intelligent man-meat hero Dash on the cover of every one of her books. The author and the model have a falling out at the book event, and immediately after, Loretta is taken away by a couple of goons on orders from Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe).

As it turns out, the treasure in Loretta's recent book is real, and using the skills of her former career, she accurately translated a dead language in one part of the novel. Anyway, Fairfax abducts the author, flies her to a lost city in the jungle and next to a ready-to-blow volcano, and won't let her go until she translates a parchment that could lead him to the missing treasure. With the help of Loretta's publisher Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), Alan puts together a rescue mission for the woman on whom he's clearly smitten—with a lot of help from a professional mercenary (played by Brad Pitt in a glorified but amusingly straight-faced cameo).

The rest of this is fairly predictable (although, while the Pitt character's exit from the story is inevitable, the means of his departure is a bit too realistic for the jokes that result). Loretta and Alan end up in the jungle alone, unprepared (She's in a sequined jumpsuit, and the thoughtful but absentminded Alan brings her fashionable, not practical, boots), constantly messing up the easier way to safety (A car has a lucky, albeit brief, stop right along the edge of a cliff), and pursued by Fairfax and his assortment of henchmen.

All the while, Loretta and Alan banter and bicker their way through the tropical forest, up steep hills, down a river (where there's the inescapable gag of Alan being covered in leeches), and slowly but surely into each other's heart. There's not much to these characters, but Bullock, whose character at least has a general idea about surviving in inhospitable places, and Tatum, who's clearly having fun as a wannabe but never-could-be action-movie hero, have a nice-enough sense of chemistry.

The screenplay (written by Oren Uziel and Dana Fox, as well as the fraternal directing team of Aaron and Adam Nee) almost seems to have been written with that sense of chemistry in mind, considering that the dynamic of this relationship is one joke (aside from a couple scenes in which Loretta hints at her grief and Alan suggests he cares more about the author's writing than she does), while the familiar travails of the adventure make up the movie's other one. The filmmakers display such little trust in and inspiration for the central plot that a decent portion of the story diverts to Fairfax, his goons, and Beth's attempt to reach her most profitable author.

Such distractions are seemingly pointless but transparently necessary in the case of The Lost City. The movie gives us the promises of a somewhat clever idea and some good-humored actors, and then, it simply and unfortunately hopes for the best.

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