The Lost City Review: Romancing the Cliché

The Lost City is proof that star power and chemistry can only take a film with a mediocre script so far.

The Lost City
Photo: Paramount Pictures

With the success of the two recent Jumanji films, and to a lesser degree Jungle Cruise, it was starting to look like the only way to get a big-budget, jungle-set adventure film made was by attaching it to a recognizable IP and casting Dwayne Johnson. Compared to those films, there’s something distinctly old school about Adam and Aaron Nee’s The Lost City, a breezy lark whose charm rests solely on the shoulders of its star performers rather than any direct, nostalgic connection to an earlier film or amusement park ride.

And yet, it’s hard not to notice just how liberally The Lost City lifts elements of both plot and character from Robert Zemeckis’s Romancing the Stone. That 1984 film, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, also follows the adventures of a lonely romance novelist who travels to a remote jungle after being swept up in a kidnapping and then meets up with a dashing hero who helps her to evade a wealthy baddie and search for a long-hidden treasure.

When the suave ex-Navy SEAL played by Brad Pitt unceremoniously exits The Lost City, that’s when the film begins to find its own voice, foregrounding the unlikely romance between reclusive novelist Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) and her hunky, much-beloved cover model, Alan (Channing Tatum), who’s long been a nuisance to the writer on her many book tours. Unfortunately, though, the film’s brisk and clever opening act is the only time that the material strikes an especially memorable balance between action and humor.

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Indeed, The Lost City’s manic hilarity reaches its peak in early scenes where Alan dances wildly on stage before his female fans and Tatum gleefully plays up his character’s Fabio-esque qualities. And the film’s most thrilling and funny action sees Pitt’s Jack Trainer dispatching an evil billionaire’s (Daniel Radcliffe) lackeys on the tropical island where much of the film takes place, deliberately undermining Alan’s masculinity every step of the way.

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During this stretch of the film, Tatum and Pitt lean into the excesses of their characters, mining surprising humor from familiar tropes. Radcliffe, too, is quite amusing as the spoiled and eccentric Fairfax, who enlists Loretta to help him find an ancient treasure called the Crown of Fire and has three giant tables full of cheese prepared for her arrival in a misguided attempt to make her feel more comfortable when she’s eventually abducted.

After Loretta is freed and she and Alan run around the island trying to find a way off of it, The Lost City sheds these more eccentric flourishes in favor of blander rom-com trappings. Bullock and Tatum have enough charisma to keep things lively enough during this final hour. But as it becomes increasingly obvious to Loretta that Alan has more depth to him than his Adonis body led her to believe, the film only solidifies his role as “generic love interest.” Bullock, for her part, plays things a bit too straight. Despite donning a purple sequin dress for nearly the entirety of The Lost City, Loretta is less a diva than one of Bullock’s familiar “girl next door” types, though one who’s struggling with the death of her husband five years after the fact.

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The broader comic beats during this stretch are often found in a subplot involving Loretta’s publicist, Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who goes to great lengths to track her friend and client down, including enlisting a pilot (Oscar Nuñez) with an unhealthy attachment to his goat. It’s a pointed attempt to make room for people of color in a film driven by white movie stars, but along with the stereotypical and cringe-inducing depiction of Nuñez’s character, the fact that Beth and the pilot have no bearing on the film’s plot leaves them feeling like afterthoughts. It’s clear that The Lost City is Bullock and Tatum’s show, but its tokenistic moves are further proof that star power and chemistry can only take a film with a mediocre script so far.

Score: 
 Cast: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Brad Pitt, Patti Harrison, Oscar Nuñez, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Thomas Forbes-Johnson, Héctor Aníbal, Raymond Lee  Director: Aaron Nee, Adam Nee  Screenwriter: Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam Nee  Distributor: Paramount Pictures  Running Time: 112 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2022  Buy: Video

Derek Smith

Derek Smith's writing has appeared in Tiny Mix Tapes, Apollo Guide, and Cinematic Reflections.

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