Review: The Lost City (2022)

The Lost City

Rating

Director

Aaron Nee, Adam Nee

Screenplay

Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, Seth Gordon

Length

1h 52m

Starring

Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Brad Pitt, Oscar Nuñez, Patti Harrison, Bowen Yang, Slang

MPAA Rating

PG-13

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Review

You can always tell when actors are having fun even with mediocre films. That’s the charm that barely holds The Lost City together.

Sandra Bullock plays an ex-archaeologist-turned-romance novel writer. Channing Tatum plays her cover model. As Bullock embarks on a publicity tour for what she declares will be her final novel, frustrations mount as the cover model who’s built a career off her novel’s successes doesn’t want to see it come to an end all while her publisher (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) struggles to keep her empire afloat. Yet, it isn’t either of these two combative situations that drive the narrative. Instead, it’s a unscrupulous rich kid (Daniel Radcliffe) mad at his father for giving his fortune and businesses over to his younger brother who kidnaps Bullock and holds her hostage. He hopes that her ancient pictographic linguistic knowledge will help him locate the legendary Crown of Fire artifact from the very civilization she details at the heart of her latest book.

Tatum witnesses her abduction and gets an acquaintance (Brad Pitt) he met at a wellness retreat to help mount her rescue. Ineptitude ensues and all the familiar beats of such storylines hit as expected. While the comedy of the film mostly works, the screenplay is bereft of inventiveness, forcing the audience to rely on the chemistry between Bullock and Tatum to hold their attention for the film’s duration. What helps this is that Bullock and Tatum seem to be having fun with the material. Their stereotypical characters give no room for variant interpretation, but both still engage honestly with the various hysterical set pieces to give the audience a fun, if superficial, time.

For their part, Radcliffe and Randolph are also enjoying the material, Randolph giving voice to an exasperated woman doing what she can to salvage the situation while Radcliffe chews into the paper thin villain with relish, nearly earning the audience’s sympathy. Yet, it’s Pitt that adds the best, most unexpected spark to his segment of the film. As an experienced ex-military tracker, Pitt’s character embodies all the elements of Bullock’s written protagonist, potentially pre-empting the wannabe savior that Tatum is trying to become.

Ultimately, the The Lost City is relatively hollow with a somewhat uncharacteristic denouement that connects back to Bullock’s late husband and her inability to let him go. After that, the resolution is straight forward and surprisingly lacking in excitement, which makes the film go out with a whimper rather than a bang. The comedy that led up to the finale is all the audience has to sustain it, but that is all it needs to be ultimately entertaining.