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The Lost City Movie Review

The Lost City is a 2022 action-adventure romantic comedy film directed by the Nee brothers and starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. It’s such a pleasantly old-fashioned flick.

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“Why are you so handsome?

My father was a weatherman“

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A reclusive romance novelist on a book tour with her cover model gets swept up in a kidnapping attempt that lands them both in a cutthroat jungle adventure. Obviously inspired by 1984’s ‘Romancing the Stone’, The Lost City will hopefully bring back these two dying genres to the multiplexes that are now straddled with way too many similar-looking superhero movies.

As a big fan of adventure movies in particular, I loved seeing this one. It genuinely felt like a theater-going experience even though I watched it on TV in my house. This is because the cinematic feel of the movie and its traditional charm of humor and big celebrities really made a spectacle.

The storyline is uninspired. I did like the modernization of the male-female relationship where the guy gets to be a damsel in distress at times and he also isn’t overly heroic and is actually rather cowardly in certain scenarios, which was interesting. The book author-cover model dynamic was also something very modern and fun.

What I did not like was the lack of utilization of its setting. The jungle scenes are thoroughly uninspired. The movie never included any plants or animals or obstacles in the jungle with the exception of the leech sequence, which was just an excuse to show off Tatum’s nude buttocks. But the movie needed more jungle scenarios. The eventual “treasure” was an interesting twist and the final act really worked, but the middle act needed improvements.

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It was hilarious seeing Brad Pitt in a very cool, heroic role and getting killed off so soon. That twist really made me laugh as it was outrageously unexpected. Daniel Radcliffe as the villain is also surprisingly competent and the movie poking fun at his size was very amusing. The sassy, disgruntled black friend also got some moments to shine in terms of the humor.

As for our stars, Bullock is fantastic as always. She really is one of Hollywood’s last remaining movie stars. She is obviously put under a lot of CGI and make-up to make her look young here, but her character was great and she was cool, yet believable throughout. As for Tatum, he gets to flex his surprisingly good comedic chops here and the result is this very sweet, funny creation. The two share excellent chemistry together and I wish they received even more scenes as they were wonderful.

The Lost City features too much CGI and not enough actual location shooting, but still the visuals are mostly solid. The pacing is great as the flick is consistently entertaining and also funny quite often. The humor is excellent, especially in the witty, well-written dialogue. The story overall lacked originality, but execution matters and here it was terrific. I wish Hollywood will now make more of these charming flicks.

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