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The Lost City Reviews

For a certain kind of mood, one filled with patience, forgiveness and the need to pass a few hours of time, The Lost City might almost be what the doctor ordered.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.75/5 | Oct 10, 2023

The Lost City is the perfect palate cleanser for those who are looking for a fresh twist on the comedy genre.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 26, 2023

Laughing, smiling, & losing my shit! Hands down one of the best comedies I’ve seen in awhile. I need more Channing Tatum & Sandra Bullock now! + Brad Pitt was amazing! This is the perfect Adventure film for all!

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Despite billing itself as a return to the entertaining adventure-romance movies of the ’80s (it’s impossible not to think of Romancing the Stone), The Lost City was afraid to lose itself in eccentricity.

The Lost City is one of this year's surprises, managing to vary the well-known formulas of the genre in a creative, fun manner (...) a thematically rich ending compensates for any cliches. Definitely, a family viewing party recommendation.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 23, 2023

The Lost City is every bit the romantic adventure we didn’t know we needed and then some. It’s fun and hilarious, and its on-the-nose praise of the romance genre is something we’ll never tire of exploring.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2023

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum get blindsided by a wonky and aimless script better suited for the balls-to-the-wall performances of its side characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2023

Sandra Bullock’s return to light-hearted comedy is welcome. While not to be taken too seriously the film does throw in a few heartfelt moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 14, 2023

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 25, 2022

...the breezy chemistry with Sandra Bullock renders this a painless hijinx...

Full Review | Dec 22, 2022

The Lost City is at its best when it is light and silly, smoothing over some of the rougher edges where its jokes don't always land.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 23, 2022

The Lost City is a terrific throwback to studio romcoms of the 90s and 00s, with two true-blue movie star performances from Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2022

A story about the vicarious pleasures of romance fiction, and about the folly of either dismissing them as stupid or of taking them too seriously … The obviousness of the genre machinery isn’t really a flaw – it’s part of the fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 29, 2022

[Channing Tatum's] energetic and eager to please — virtues he shares with the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 24, 2022

The sort of bubbly, unchallenging studio plaything that some of us may receive gratefully in these harrowed times.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 24, 2022

Bullock is a solid anchor, Radcliffe gets a couple of humorous lines, and Tatum does his best. But it’s Pitt who steals the show. So much so that the drop-off is pretty significant whenever he’s not on screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2022

A word comes to mind that isn’t often used when describing movies lately. Thinking, thinking … oh, right! The word is “fun.” “The Lost City” is fun.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 15, 2022

An unofficial remake of 'Romancing the Stone' with a big movie star cameo. Dull, obvious and very familiar with a script that just pokes along.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 14, 2022

There are five writers sharing screenplay credit, but for me the writing of Bullock's character was the weakest element.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 9, 2022

The breezy pace is appreciated, but in two years, viewers won't recall any discernible differences between this, Uncharted, and Jungle Cruise.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 31, 2022

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The lost city, common sense media reviewers.

Bullock romcom adventure has cheeky moments, brief blood.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

You are the author of your life story, so live lif

Loretta is a smart woman who incorporates her rese

Non-stereotypical gender representation. Loretta i

One shocking, gruesome shooting with intense blood

Kiss. A character is naked during a long, comical

Strong language includes "ass," "a--hole," "d--k,"

Quite a few brands are notably displayed or mentio

Villains smoke cigars. Drinking throughout, includ

Positive Messages

You are the author of your life story, so live life to the fullest. With a theme of moving on after loss, the message delivered several times is that life is "sweeter after difficulty." Themes include courage, curiosity, and teamwork.

Positive Role Models

Loretta is a smart woman who incorporates her research on ancient cultures into her work. Alan is honest, courageous, and loyal and steps out of his comfort zone to help Loretta. While both Loretta and Alan are ill-equipped to survive a jungle, they work together to overcome obstacles. Beth is a successful boss who prioritizes people over profits.

Diverse Representations

Non-stereotypical gender representation. Loretta is smart and values substance over surface. Alan is emotionally vulnerable, sensitive, humble. Less positively, his beauty routine is a source of humor; there are a couple of laughs based on his supposed lack of intelligence. But his overall depiction is meant to show that a person's relative braininess is just one characteristic in what makes them unique. Eloquent words are used to describe something some see as "ugly" (a skin condition that leads to insecurity) as beautiful. A tough Navy SEAL is also a Buddhist yoga practitioner who quotes Taoist philosophy. Successful Black female publisher Beth is a fully expressed supporting character who brings (a little) body diversity to the film. Most other characters of color are depicted as villains, corrupt, unbalanced, or smarmy.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

One shocking, gruesome shooting with intense blood splatter (but no body shown on camera, and there's a positive resolution). Additional action violence is clearly choreographed to the point of hilarity, with punches, kicks, and knocking people out with hard objects. Villains are armed and shoot guns but mostly miss. Falls that likely result in death. Positive characters are constantly in deep peril, including trapped under water or in a fiery enclosure. Lots of talk about those who potentially die, acknowledging respect for the sanctity of life, even for those with evil intent.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kiss. A character is naked during a long, comical scene that shows his bare backside, with another character commenting extensively about the size of his penis (it's not shown). The main character is a romance novelist, and there's some innuendo and suggestiveness in regard to her writing. Some low-cut shirts. Romantic feelings.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes "ass," "a--hole," "d--k," and "s--t." "Slut" is used as a comical, misguided woman-to-woman term of endearment. "Jesus Christ!" said as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Quite a few brands are notably displayed or mentioned, indicating product placement, including Fiji water, Jamba Juice, and a Ram truck. Positive characters drink alcohol with the label of the beverage clearly seen, including Don Julio and Stella Artois.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Villains smoke cigars. Drinking throughout, including tequila, whiskey, champagne, wine, and beer. A character in her 20s appears to have had too much to drink.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Lost City is a romcom action adventure starring Sandra Bullock , Channing Tatum , and Daniel Radcliffe . With a theme of moving on after loss, it has strong messages about being the author of your own story and that life is "sweeter after difficulty." While most of the violence is typical big-budget action fare, there's plenty of peril and one gruesome moment involving a shooting that appears to have been added for shock value (but ultimately has a reassuring resolution). Tatum's bare backside is seen extensively in a nonsexual scene that also has a lot of references to his penis (which isn't shown). Bullock's character writes steamy novels, so expect innuendo and racy language ("d--k," "s--t," etc.), as well as some creative writing tips -- e.g., a humorous dissertation on when the word "throbbing" can and can't be used. There's lots of product placement, particularly alcoholic beverages, which are poured and consumed throughout (villains also smoke cigars). Non-stereotypical portrayals include an intelligent romance novelist, a muscular model who's emotionally vulnerable, and a philosophical Navy SEAL who's into yoga. Although most characters of color are unfortunately portrayed as corrupt or unbalanced, supporting character Beth ( Da'Vine Joy Randolph ) is a great role model: She's a successful Black businessperson who works hard, cares about profits and people, and establishes and maintains boundaries. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (12)
Kids say (27)

Based on 12 parent reviews

Clean Hollywood movie. Thank you Sandra, Channing and Brad!

Very funny and entertaining, but not in the “family friendly” category, what's the story.

In THE LOST CITY, reclusive romance novelist Loretta Sage ( Sandra Bullock ) is starting the promotional tour for her latest work, The Lost City of D , accompanied by handsome cover model Alan ( Channing Tatum ). When Loretta is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire ( Daniel Radcliffe ) to help him find the lost city's lost treasure, Alan sets off to rescue her to prove he's just as much a hero as the one he portrays on Loretta's book covers.

Is It Any Good?

Treasure hunting + adventure + comedy + romance seems like a formula for cinematic success, and, indeed, Paramount Pictures has struck gold here. Giving off Romancing the Stone vibes, The Lost City has a hilarious script that's made even funnier with perfect casting. Bullock is the master of playing a relatably put-upon woman, and here she also gets to be the smartest person in the room and the jungle. It's a kick to see Tatum and co-star Brad Pitt play into their sex-symbol images, laughing along with the audience while simultaneously showing that the "ideal man" has the same insecurities and vulnerabilities as everyone else.

While the top-billed stars are national treasures, the real find in The Lost City is Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Loretta's publisher, Beth. She could have easily turned out as a typical romcom confidante, but Randolph offers a different take, evolving "the best friend" into a magnificent, three-dimensional, confident woman who is a boss by all definitions, literally going to the ends of the Earth for those she loves. While this isn't a perfect film, it's pretty great, and writer Seth Gordon puts plenty in it to love, including a strong message that it's the hard times that help us appreciate the good times.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence and peril in The Lost City. How did the movie use death both for comedy and to magnify the importance that the loss of any life, even that of a villain, is a tragedy? The characters are often in extreme peril: Were you ever worried? Why, or why not?

What do you think "sweeter after difficulty" means? Why might it be a good mantra to remember during rough times?

Do you think The Lost City is a romantic comedy? Why, or why not? How does it compare to other romcoms?

What is product placement, and how does it impact buying choices ? Did you notice certain brands?

Are smoking and drinking glamorized here? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 25, 2022
On DVD or streaming : July 26, 2022
Cast : Sandra Bullock , Channing Tatum , Daniel Radcliffe , Brad Pitt
Directors : Aaron Nee , Adam Nee
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Paramount Pictures
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Adventures , Great Girl Role Models
Character Strengths : Courage , Curiosity , Teamwork
Run time : 92 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence and some bloody images, suggestive material, partial nudity and language
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : April 6, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Romancing the Stone

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Jungle Cruise

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

The Princess Bride

Romantic Comedies

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‘The Lost City’ Review: Raiders of the 1980s Blockbusters

Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum and a vamping Brad Pitt run around in a romantic adventure that you have seen before and will see again.

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By Manohla Dargis

If you don’t have a few hours to watch the cheerfully dumb comedy “The Lost City,” just stare at the poster. Almost everything you need to know about this nonsensical lark is crammed into the one sheet: the stars, the tropical location, the Bruckheimer-esque fireball. The poster is selling sex and violence and obvious laughs, with Sandra Bullock’s sequined purple onesie doing the heavy comic lifting. And while she and Channing Tatum are the headliners, the studio has hedged its bets by also cramming in a leering goat and a Fabio-ed Brad Pitt.

The goat and Pitt are among the high points of the movie, a high-concept romp about a widowed writer, Loretta Sage (Bullock), making a tortuous re-entrance into the world. A successful romance novelist, Loretta writes books featuring a hunky dreamboat and throbbing verbs. For strained reasons, she is kidnapped while on a promo tour with the cover model for her books, Alan (Tatum). He tries to rescue her and soon they’re joking through a jungle adventure featuring a lost treasure, and a deranged rich villain (Daniel Radcliffe) and his minions. Bullets and jokes fly, not always hitting their targets.

That’s more or less the movie, which is basically a vehicle for Bullock to play her most enduring role: Sandra Bullock, your supremely likable BFF. Genuine yet packaged, challenged but unsinkable, the Bullock BFF has been a mainstay for decades. She’s endured rough patches, as in “Speed 2,” but has always bounced back, buoyed by a shrewdly deployed, indomitable persona that’s wholesome, sardonic and goofy, though not (usually) insultingly so. Although she can handle a range of genres, she excels at comedy partly because she can play off a wide range of performers: Like all BFFs, she makes a generous double act.

That said, it takes a while for Bullock and Tatum to find their groove, in part because he isn’t as comfortable in his lunkhead role as he needs to be. He’s playing a conventional sweet dope, a cliché role he handles fluidly when in Alan’s exaggerated cover-model drag, complete with flowing hair and peekaboo waxed chest. But he is less facile when his character comes off as impossibly stupid, moments he plays by affecting a bit of a Mark Wahlberg whiny singsong. Is it homage, coincidence — who knows? Whatever the case, Tatum seems happier when his character fares better too, allowing him and Bullock to settle into a breezy intimacy.

For the most part, “The Lost City” delivers exactly what it promises: A couple of highly polished avatars quipping and hitting their marks while occasionally being upstaged by their second bananas (Da’Vine Joy Randolph included). There are some accommodations to contemporary mores. Tatum bares more skin than Bullock does, flashing his sculpted hindquarters in a scene that, like the movie overall, isn’t as sharp or as funny as it should be. But while Loretta isn’t as helpless as she might have been back in the old studio days, this is still about a man rescuing a woman whose eye makeup never runs even when she does.

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Sandra bullock and channing tatum in ‘the lost city’: film review | sxsw 2022.

The stars share the screen with Brad Pitt in a 'Romancing the Stone'-inspired comedy-adventure directed by Adam and Aaron Nee.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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A Romancing the Stone -like adventure featuring a more unlikely pair of lovers-to-be than Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, Aaron and Adam Nee’s The Lost City follows a romance novelist ( Sandra Bullock ) as she’s caught up in a plot every bit as loony as those she has grown tired of inventing for her fans.

While it’s no longer surprising to see the sensitive and funny sides of costar Channing Tatum , his hunky character’s puppy-like devotion to Bullock’s dismissive damsel in distress serves the pic quite well, enlivening action that (after a winningly over-the-top kickoff) might otherwise grow too generic. A vastly bigger undertaking than The Last Romantic , the microbudget debut the directors brought to SXSW in 2006, it’s a thoroughly commercial film despite feeling only a little bit more of-the-moment than its 1984 inspiration.

Full credits

Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Headliners) Distributor: Paramount Pictures Production companies: 3dot productions, Exhibit A, Fortis Films Cast: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Oscar Nuñez, Patti Harrison, Bowen Yang Directors: Adam Nee, Aaron Nee Screenwriters: Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam Nee, Aaron Nee Producers: Liza Chasin, Sandra Bullock, Seth Gordon Executive Producers: JJ Hook, Dana Fox, Julia Gunn, Margaret Chernin Director of photography: Jonathan Sela Production designer: Jim Bissell Costume designer: Marlene Stewart Editor: Craig Alpert Composer: Pinar Toprak Casting directors: Miguel Fernandez, Tricia Wood

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‘The Lost City’ Review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum Are Cute Together in Guilty-Pleasure Treasure Movie

Flipping the gender roles slightly, this ‘Romancing the Stone’ redux suggests you can have your beefcake and do whatever you want with it.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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You know studio movies are in a rut when, amid endless Spider-Bat sequels, you find yourself longing for the likes of such escapist 1980s offerings as “Romancing the Stone” and “King Solomon’s Mines.” I can’t be the only one who’s been craving a good old-fashioned treasure hunt, where the leads throw sparks and the ladies’ makeup never smudges, no matter how close to the volcano they get. After a long stretch without such a big-screen Hollywood adventure movie (at least, not one without ties to a video game or theme park ride), “ The Lost City ” makes for welcome counter-programming.

The story was producer Seth Gordon’s idea, but credit siblings Adam and Aaron Nee (who tested the waters with their Mark Twain-inspired “Band of Robbers”) for sprucing up the formula, while Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum supply the chemistry. Bullock plays brainy romance novelist Loretta Sage, who’s lost her inspiration since the death of her husband, an archaeologist who might have been onto something. Her once-scorching potboilers barely simmer these days, and she’s seriously thinking of killing off Dash, the long-haired, Fabio-looking Lothario who graces the covers of all her books.

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Alan, who isn’t the brightest, has the wisdom to enlist an old acquaintance, lethal ex-Navy SEAL Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt), who typically works solo. But Alan insists on tagging along, and together these two dreamy dudes follow the signal from Loretta’s watch to the middle of the Atlantic, where Abigail has located the “Lost City of D.” To Alan’s chagrin, Loretta seems a lot more interested in Jack once she’s rescued, although the adventure’s only just begun. (Pitt, who provides the kind of scene-stealing cameo Tatum did in last summer’s “Free Guy,” doesn’t stick around for long.)

Free from captivity but still stuck on the island, Loretta realizes that maybe she could figure out where the Crown of Fire is hidden. Pursued by Abigail’s henchmen, she and Alan make their way through the jungle, navigating nearly all the usual pitfalls of the genre — minus bone-in-the-nose natives. “The Lost City” evokes movies that can seem outrageously insensitive when revisited today, while avoiding the most wince-inducing clichés. One reason I’ve been craving a fresh “Romancing the Stone”-like movie is that I happened to revisit the original during the early days of COVID and winced at the overtly racist stereotypes (not to mention the unconvincing Mexico-as-South-America locations).

“The Lost City” was shot in the Dominican Republic, and though there’s a whole lot of CG involved, it’s still great to see movie stars running around real jungles, especially after being cooped up indoors for two years. Even at the movie’s masks-on SXSW Film Festival premiere, “The Lost City” was a breath of fresh air: the kind of breezy two-hour getaway that doesn’t take itself too seriously, delivering screwball banter between Bullock and Tatum — a guilty-pleasure treasure hunt that pretends to be more progressive than it really is by alternating between who’s saving whom.

Loretta Sage is no feminist icon — she runs around the island in high heels and a glittering fuchsia jumpsuit — but at least the movie lets her keep her clothes on, whereas Alan’s constantly losing his. Ditching the usual bimbo-in-peril routine of movies like “Six Days, Seven Nights,” the movie focuses more on Dash’s cleavage than it does hers, and there’s even a gratuitous leech-removal scene that reveals more of the actor than “Magic Mike” did. Tatum knows what his fans want, and so does Bullock, leaning into the kind of physical comedy that’s been her forte since “Miss Congeniality.” A bit in which she’s wheelbarrowed through the jungle while strapped to a chair, as pyrotechnics go off around her, revives the goofiness factor that’s been missing from CG-dominated action movies.

“The Lost City” won’t be nominated for any Oscars, but it repeats what Spielberg and Lucas did for “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” mining a century-old genre for inspiration and polishing those tropes for a new generation. A subplot involving Loretta’s publisher Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) makes room for a few people of color (including Oscar Nuñez as an offbeat accomplice), and it’s a nice surprise to see Radcliffe playing against type, even if the movie doesn’t quite know how to wrap up the supporting characters’ stories. (A bonus scene tucked into the end credits essentially invalidates one of the movie’s best gags.) The result can feel a little rickety in places, but the Nee brothers — who share screenplay credit with Oren Uziel and Dana Fox — have punched it up with off-color jokes, looped over moments when the characters’ mouths are off-camera. In this and myriad other ways, “The Lost City” proves they do in fact make ’em like they used to.

Reviewed at SXSW Film Festival (Headliners), March 12, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 112 MIN.

Production: A Paramount Pictures release and presentation of a Fortis Films, 3dot Prods., Exhibit A production. Producers: Liza Chasin, Sandra Bullock, Seth Gordon. Executive producers: JJ Hook, Dana Fox, Julia Gunn, Margaret Chernin.
Crew: Directors: Adam Nee, Aaron Nee. Screenplay: Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam Nee & Aaron Nee; story: Seth Gordon. Camera: Jonathan Sela. Editor: Craig Alpert. Music: Pinar Toprak.
With: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Oscar Nuñez, Patti Harrison, Bowen Yang.

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The Lost City finally fills in the very specific movie gap that The Mummy left behind

Channing Tatum, Sandra Bullock, and Daniel Radcliffe bring back the high-energy, high-stakes action-romance

Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock look up with a waterfall behind them in the jungle in The Lost City

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Share All sharing options for: The Lost City finally fills in the very specific movie gap that The Mummy left behind

This review comes out of the 2022 media expo SXSW, where Polygon sent writers to look at the next wave of upcoming releases.

The adventure-romance genre has stood the test of time for a reason. At its best, it offers exotic, remote locations that don’t often show up in movies; a beautiful couple with good chemistry; and a compelling adventure with danger, a love story, and usually a solid sense of humor. After 1951’s The African Queen set the standard for adventure-romances by uniting its era’s biggest stars on a high-stakes trip, and 1984’s Romancing the Stone parlayed the same concept into a crowd-pleasing blockbuster, many filmmakers have tried to replicate the formula. But they’ve found it surprisingly difficult to do well.

While the plot of The Lost City makes it sound notably similar to Romancing the Stone , it’s actually most successful as a successor to The Mummy , a film that found the comedy in the adventure-romance genre and inspired many competitors that failed to live up to it. The Lost City doesn’t have the most exciting or novel plot, and it doesn’t push action filmmaking forward. But it does feature two of the moment’s greatest movie stars coming in at the top of their rom-com game, mixing adventure and love. Filmmaking brothers Aaron Nee and Adam Nee ( The Last Romantic , Band of Robbers ) avoid many of the stereotypes these movies normally fall into, and along the way, they remind viewers that Channing Tatum is a perfect himbo, and Sandra Bullock is a long-standing rom-com queen.

Channing Tatum and Brad Pitt wheel Sandra Bullock away from a huge explosion in a wheelbarrow in The Lost City

Bullock stars as Loretta Sage, a former archaeologist who has discovered that people aren’t really interested in books about lost civilizations, but they will certainly read a romance novel featuring a hot adventurer going to faraway places. She’s channeled her knowledge into writing those novels, but after years of filling books with the same double-entendre jokes comparing lava flowing down a volcano to different fluids flowing down her fictional hero’s “volcano,” she’s become bitter and dissatisfied — especially over her sweet but dimwitted cover model Alan (Tatum), who seems to think he really is the Fabio-inspired star of her books.

After a string of bestsellers, Loretta wants nothing more than to stop writing novels, even if that means ruining her new book tour before it begins. She doesn’t much care about derailing it, since everyone seems to be there just to see Alan shirtless, not to hear about a book. But Loretta can’t drop her career so easily, because she gets abducted by Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), a rich guy who really wants her to know both that “Abigail” is a gender-neutral name, and that the lost city from Loretta’s new book is real and that it’s hiding an immense treasure. He wants her to translate some ancient writing and help him secure the treasure before a volcano eruption buries the whole thing. If he can use the discovery to finally get one up on his more successful brother, all the better.

Yes, the story is a not-so-hidden repeat of Romancing the Stone , with a novelist getting sucked into a treasure hunt in the Latin American jungle. But the cast makes The Lost City stand out. Bullock channels her Miss Congeniality comedic chops for a slapstick performance that shows she isn’t afraid of looking silly. Tatum shows why he’s one of this decade’s biggest movie stars: He excels at exploiting his looks and charisma for comedy. It’s worth watching the movie just to see him utterly fail at being an action hero, like when Loretta throws him a gun and he ducks instead of catching it.

Channing Tatum, in a frilly white shirt, points into the distance while standing with a white horse on a beach in The Lost City

Then there’s the scene-stealing supporting cast, including Brad Pitt channeling his cool, carefree character from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to play a true action-adventure hero with a magical head of hair. And of course, a good adventure film needs a good villain, and Radcliffe makes a welcome return to blockbusters with a performance that feels like he did a bump of Adderall in the bathroom before every scene.

There’s no question that the Nee brothers and their screenwriting partners Oren Uziel (of the 2021 Mortal Kombat reboot ) and Dana Fox (a writer on Cruella ) consider the movie’s laughs more important than its big stunts. Taking some cues from The Mummy , they’ve clearly decided that they have a winning combination in a big, dumb action hero who looks just as cool beating up a bad guy as he does falling off a motorcycle like a doofus. And placing him next to a capable, smart woman who doesn’t really need saving can create some sparkling chemistry. Not since Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz has a movie like this exuded so much steamy hot chemistry. The Lost City gets a lot of mileage out of placing Bullock and Tatum in awkward but funny situations, as when she has to pull leeches off his butt.

As a treasure-hunting adventure film, like Jungle Cruise , National Treasure, or the recent Uncharted , The Lost City hits the usual notes: your standard puzzle-solving, your codexes, your crawling through very narrow cave openings, and so forth. But thankfully, the creators don’t try to cram in elaborate mechanisms that are hundreds of years old yet have never been found before, like Uncharted does . They also don’t go the Indiana Jones route, with artifacts that are actually magical.

Daniel Radcliffe in a white suit holds a cup of tea and stands over a desk in a tent in The Lost City

Instead, they offer up a grounded, clever roadmap to a supposed treasure that is simply blown out of proportion by unsuspecting white people who expect a big El Dorado-esque secret at the end of the journey. A big problem with adventure films like this is that they focus on stereotypes and on exoticizing other cultures until they’re unrecognizable. The Lost City dodges the issue by mostly ignoring the lore around the treasure in favor of the comedic hijinks between its leads, and by treating the local population with care. When Loretta and Alan arrive in a small town, there’s no special local festival with unusual traditions, no grand welcome for the white foreigners — just a town square where people hang out on a Saturday evening.

But while the filmmakers try to mitigate their use of a Latin American island as an exotic setting by having one of the henchmen be a local with a connection to the culture and the treasure, he’s somewhat left behind by the plot. And The Lost City does include one unfortunate stereotype: a sex-crazed Latin-lover character, who’s played for laughs without adding anything to the story.

In this and other ways, the team behind The Lost City isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel on the adventure-romance trope, so much as it’s trying to slightly update and revive a subgenre that’s faded into the background of cinema, along with theatrical rom-coms and big ensemble comedy movies. The Lost City is capable enough to step into the void and take advantage of the way films like The Mummy have become less common, but it isn’t so striking or memorable that it’s likely to usher in a new era of treasure-hunting capers. Still, Bullock and Tatum’s chemistry is a reminder of why this type of film used to occupy as much space as it did in theaters. It’s an old-school kind of screwball comedy, seemingly designed to ask a single question: Are filmgoers ready and excited for another Mummy yet?

The Lost City opens in theaters on March 24.

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'The Lost City' is silly, sexy, movie-star fun

Linda Holmes

There are so many Sandra Bullocks, and there are so many Channing Tatums.

Putting these two in a movie together could give you the gritty and dramatic, the glamorous, or the swooning and romantic version of both. But happily, The Lost City gives you their silly romantic-comedy version. I must admit: In both cases, I think it's my favorite.

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Bullock plays Loretta, who started out as an anthropologist and, after the death of her husband and collaborator, used that knowledge to write a hugely popular series of adventure romance novels featuring a hero named Dash. Tatum plays Alan, the cover model who represents Dash, whose Fabio-ish flowing locks have made him even more popular with Loretta's fans than she is. Loretta is ambivalent as she debuts her latest novel; she's in a rut with these characters, and to the dismay of her editor, Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), she's thinking about just closing down the whole franchise. Among other things, she's sick of being forced to promote her books alongside Alan, whom she considers vain and dopey.

Loretta is in the middle of blowing up her book tour when she is grabbed by a couple of dudes who work for a rich jerk named Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), whose reason for kidnapping Loretta relates to her academic work rather than her novels. When Alan — who does like Loretta, even though she doesn't like him at all — realizes she's in trouble, he decides to try to rescue her. So it turns into an adventure-romcom, and of course they learn to like each other, and comedy ensues.

The obvious reference here is Romancing the Stone , the 1984 film in which Kathleen Turner plays a romance novelist who gets swept up in an adventure with Michael Douglas' on-the-nose rugged adventure hero. But this is really an inversion of that idea, given that Alan is very much not Dash, and in a very funny sequence I really don't want to spoil, you get a chance to see him alongside a guy who is more like Dash, and the two could not be more different.

There's not much to this movie from a plot perspective, and few of the story beats are going to surprise anybody or say anything. (Although I do like the way that what threatens early on to become a distasteful caricature of romance writing gets some reconsideration as the film goes along.) The draw in The Lost City is simply the fabulous time everybody seems to be having, particularly Bullock and Tatum, who are delightful together, and both of whom capitalize very well on their skills in physical comedy.

Channing Tatum is one of the best of his generation at understanding his physical self and using it in interesting ways, from the dancing in Step Up and Magic Mike, to the unexpected action scenes in Haywire, to the stillness of the athlete he played in Foxcatcher, to his talent in comedy. He has not only a dancer's understanding of dance itself, but a dancer's understanding of his body and how it plays in different settings. Here, he takes a character who is introduced as a perfect specimen and finds the guy's inner doofus. And it's not just through pratfalls — it's through small, smart choices (how he runs, how he crouches, how he stands, what he looks like when he's scared) that strip away cover-model swagger and emphasize that an action hero is not just a guy who goes to the gym.

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This kind of being funny is also one of Sandra Bullock's strengths. She's always been good in comedies and in action movies with comedy elements, like Speed , in part because she understands not only how to deliver jokes, but how to look funny. Most of Miss Congeniality is about this; she is why it works. And there's a moment in While You Were Sleeping in which the great Jason Bernard, playing Bullock's boss, gives her a blunt assessment of her standing as the fake fiancée of a man in a coma, and she makes what might be the most inspired "yikes" face of the '90s. When people think of physical comedy, maybe it's more traditional to mean broad and big sequences, but these are both actors whose talent in comedy is closely connected with how well they understand what looks funny.

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Sandra bullock on playing an ex-con trying to reenter society after 20 years.

They're also both very good at turning on a dime; there's a scene in which they do get to dance together (if you're going to be in a romantic comedy with Channing Tatum, you should certainly get to dance with him), and as silly as the rest of the movie is, that scene is pretty sexy. And refreshingly, even though there's more than 15 years between Bullock and Tatum, nobody talks about it — just like they rarely talk about it when men in romantic films are significantly older than the women they played opposite.

The Lost City isn't up there with the brilliantly silly Paul Feig action comedies that it seems to be inspired by, like Spy and The Heat . It doesn't have the joke density they do, nor the multiplicity of inspired supporting performances. (It's possible the writing got a little scattershot — the screenplay is credited to the directors Adam and Aaron Nee, plus Dana Fox and Oren Uziel, from a story by Seth Gordon. The shaggy script may have had too many cooks.) And despite the fact that Loretta talks (and the movie talks) about how "artifact near a volcano" stories about white "adventurers" are adjacent to colonization, the fact remains that the movie still is calling on a lot of those tropes, even as it tries to critique them a bit.

Still, as a broadly goofy comedy featuring two enormously charismatic leads who are perfectly suited to each other, it scratches a particular itch very, very effectively.

Cast & crew
User reviews

The Lost City

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. 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. 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.

Sandra Bullock
Channing Tatum
Daniel Radcliffe
1.1K User reviews
253 Critic reviews
60 Metascore
3 wins & 10 nominations

Loretta Sage …

Abigail Fairfax

Beth Hatten

Jack Trainer

Ray the Moderator

Fantasy Villain

Woman Singing in Village

Officer Sawyer

Officer Gomez

Limo Driver

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Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia Ryan Reynolds was originally sought after for the lead male role, marking this a reunion with Sandra Bullock after The Proposal (2009) but a deal couldn't be reached.
Goofs After Loretta removes Alan's leeches, the wounds are immediately shown as dark circles. However, when leeches latch on they release an anti-coagulant to prevent blood clotting and make it easier to feed, so when a leech is removed, there would be profuse bleeding which would likely continue for hours.

Loretta : Why are you so handsome?

Jack Trainer : My father was a weatherman.

Crazy credits There is a short scene after the first part of the credits.
Connections Featured in Late Night with Seth Meyers: Holly Hunter/Patti Harrison/Catherine Cohen/Larnell Lewis (2022)
Soundtracks True Written by Gary Kemp Performed by Spandau Ballet Courtesy of Parlophone Records Limited By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User reviews 1.1K

Sleepin_Dragon
Apr 25, 2022
How long is The Lost City? Powered by Alexa
March 25, 2022 (United States)
United States
Official Site
Official Site (Japan)
Thành Phố Mất Tích
Samana, Dominican Republic
Paramount Pictures
3dot productions
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$68,000,000 (estimated)
$105,344,029
$30,453,269
Mar 27, 2022
$192,907,684

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 52 minutes

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Review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum go enjoyably neo-screwball in ‘The Lost City’

A woman and a man beside a waterfall in the movie "The Lost City."

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Midway through the tomb-raiding, car-crashing, butt-baring shenanigans of “The Lost City,” Channing Tatum pauses to remind Sandra Bullock not to judge a book by its cover. It’s an apt cliché: She plays Loretta Sage, the author of a series of popular romance novels; he’s Alan, the stud whose ripped chest and Fabio wig have helped sell her paperbacks to millions of happy readers. To Loretta, Alan is an incompetent himbo with delusions of grandeur and certainly the last fool she’d want to be stuck with on a wild and crazy jungle adventure. But like a lot of Tatum characters (see the “Magic Mike” and “21 Jump Street” movies — seriously), he turns out to be smarter, deeper and more genuinely heroic than she expects.

So sure, don’t judge a book by its cover. I should note, however, that I may have committed an equivalent offense when I opted to check out “The Lost City”: The poster made it look kind of fun, and lo and behold, it is. It helps that the pairing of Bullock and Tatum — now that sounds like a law firm I’d hire, or at least a hoity-toity restaurant I’d eat at — is as delightful as you’d expect from two actors of such goofy charm and combustible energy. It also helps that the directors, Aaron and Adam Nee ( “Band of Robbers” ), have tailored this unapologetically derivative vehicle to their stars’ easygoing chemistry, taking what might have been a strained, clanging excuse for a mainstream action-comedy and investing it with, if not big belly laughs, then at least a refreshing sweetness of spirit.

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This may sound like a strange thing to say about a movie in which the male lead gets spattered with human viscera and attacked by blood-sucking leeches (though not, thankfully, in the same scene). But I’m getting ahead of the plot, which is a pleasant mix of the familiar, the preposterous and the familiarly preposterous.

Along with their co-writers, Oren Uziel and Dana Fox, the brothers Nee have rearranged the sturdy bones of “Romancing the Stone,” Robert Zemeckis’ 1984 adventure starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Once again a pulp novelist finds herself lost in a distant jungle thanks to some treasure-hungry ne’er-do-wells, and once again a not-entirely-trustworthy man comes to her ostensible rescue. This variation on the formula has fewer crocodiles and more explosions; it also has a bonus extended cameo by Brad Pitt , briefly and amusingly sending up his own guy’s-guy nonchalance.

(L-R) Directors Adam Nee and Aaron Nee, Liza Chasin, Daniel Radcliffe and Sandra Bullock onstage at SXSW for "The Lost City"

Sandra Bullock makes ‘The Lost City’ feel like home at SXSW

The action-comedy ‘The Lost City,’ starring Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum and Daniel Radcliffe, brought warm, friendly star power to Austin, Texas.

March 13, 2022

The two lead roles have also been deftly customized, both to reflect a more 21st-century gender dynamic and to accommodate the yin-yang mix of Bullock’s smarts and Tatum’s sensitivity. Loretta may be a popular writer, but she also despises her work and most of her readers; she’s a serious-minded archaeologist by trade (so, sniff, was her late husband) with a specialty in dead languages. This (sort of) explains why she’s suddenly kidnapped, mid-book tour, by Alistair Fairfax (a very good Daniel Radcliffe), a wealthy media baron with a Murdoch-scion complex who flies her to his heavily guarded compound on a distant island, where she and she alone can locate the whereabouts of some storied El Dorado.

And so even as she has to traipse through the jungle in an impractical sequined jumpsuit as purple as her prose, Loretta is hardly a damsel in distress. And Bullock, having already bested an exploding bus in “Speed,” a failing spacecraft in “Gravity” and a suicidal epidemic in “Bird Box,” regards this out-of-nowhere abduction as if it were merely an ill-timed holiday. Loretta is better prepared to survive a deadly tropical adventure than, say, Alan, who nonetheless touchingly chases after her, determined to live up to the chivalry and heroism of his fictional alter ego.

Daniel Radcliffe and Sandra Bullock in “The Lost City.”

And after a bumbling, grumbling fashion, he does. Alan isn’t much of a fighter, as we see in a few amusingly staged early action scenes, but his abiding sweetness gradually disarms Loretta, as does his habit of shedding clothing whenever narratively necessary (which is cheekily often). It also nudges “The Lost City” into a more pleasurably laid-back groove than you might expect. You wouldn’t call this movie understated, exactly: There are cars to crash, ancient treasures to uncover and bad men to incinerate, but Bullock and Tatum never seem in any particular hurry to get it all done.

They make an effortlessly watchable duo, whether they’re squeezing into a hammock or negotiating the gently bickersome neo-screwball rhythms of the dialogue. The other actors pick up nicely on their vibes, including Oscar Nuñez as a friendly guy with a goat and a terrific Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Loretta’s tirelessly loyal book agent, who knows all too well the value of romantic fantasies as shrewdly calculated as this one.

‘The Lost City’

Rated: PG-13, for violence and some bloody images, suggestive material, partial nudity and language Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Playing: Starts March 25 in general release

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The Lost City Review

Sandra bullock and channing tatum are good at their jobs..

The Lost City will hit theaters on March 25, 2022.

The Lost City scratches that particular Channing Tatum itch, the same one satisfied by his directorial debut Dog , where he once again claims the title of Himbo Supreme. His goofy charm, coupled with the radiant and reliable presence of Sandra Bullock — who, at the age of 57, continues to lead action and romance like nobody’s business — keeps the film afloat, even when its mere 112-minute runtime starts to feel endless, and fewer of its jokes begin to land.

It’s directed by brothers Aaron and Adam Nee, who also share writing credits with Dana Fox and Oren Uziel. Whether or not the production was a case of too many cooks, it often feels like it, between its dropped threads, its unfunny (though mercifully truncated) subplot detours, and its litany of jokes added via ADR and delivered from off-screen, only about half of which work in any given scene. However, when a movie is this self-assured of its stars and what they bring to the table, no amount of haphazard filmmaking can prevent it from being enjoyable.

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Bullock plays burnt-out romance author Loretta Sage, who balks at the prospect of yet another book tour where her heartthrob cover model — Tatum’s Alan Caprison, in character as her golden-maned hero Dash McMahon — hogs the spotlight. Twenty volumes in, she abruptly decides that her latest steamy paperback, “The Lost City of D,” will be her last, and will thus be Alan’s swan song too, which leads to an exchange of unpleasant words between the reluctant duo. However, before the well-meaning Alan can apologize, he witnesses Loretta being taken hostage by Daniel Radcliffe’s skeevy businessman Abigail Fairfax, who hopes to use Loretta’s real-world skills as a former archeologist to translate and uncover the location of a hidden treasure, if only to prove to his family that he can. It turns out Fairfax may have discovered the lost city about which Loretta had been writing, pouring elements of her old career into works of fiction by which she now feels shackled.

Armed with AirPods, a neck pillow, and a rolling suitcase, Alan mounts a rescue mission with the help of his suave former trainer, the mysterious mercenary Jack (Brad Pitt), whose resemblance to the fictitious Dash ignites sparks between him and Loretta, and ignites Alan’s envy. However, before long, the mission goes off the rails, and Alan and Loretta are left to their own devices, caught between finding their way off a mysterious Atlantic island, and potentially uncovering its archeological secrets.

What's the best Sandra Bullock comedy?

Bullock’s character is given more emotional heft than the trailers let on. For one thing, The Lost City introduces us to Loretta through pictures of her alongside her now-dead husband, whose absence has caused her to become closed off from the world. It’s a big emotional swing from a film filled wall-to-wall with jokes, but it affords Bullock the opportunity to bring a sense of gravitas to even her quippiest interactions and her bits of physical comedy, making for a delightful contrast with the seemingly airheaded Alan. Where Loretta’s woes are on full display, Alan is more of a closed book that she (and the audience) discover chapter by chapter, mostly through his genuine concern for her. For everything that doesn’t work in The Lost City — a lengthy list! — Loretta and Alan’s simmering-yet-slapstick romance makes up for nearly all of them.

Its emotional throughline doesn’t really play as intended. In order to break out of her rut, Loretta needs to stop living in the past, but the path laid out before her — of adventuring, rediscovering her old passions, and finally locating the ruins for which she and her husband had been searching — is distinctly at odds with this idea of moving forward. The film’s dramatic moments tend to grind things to a halt, acting as more of a pause button on the comedy than a complementary force, but thankfully, Tatum and Bullock’s banter is always just around the corner.

The supporting cast is, for the most part, delightful too, even when they don’t entirely work. Pitt is absurdly, almost satirically hyper-capable in an action-hero role tailor made for him. Radcliffe’s Napoleon complex as a scorned billionaire makes him a lively treat, as he whips between soft-spoken and megalomaniacal, and a couple of his key henchmen stick around throughout the story as well, adding their own color to the proceedings. One of them, Rafi (Héctor Aníbal), even has a connection to the island’s fictitious culture and gets his own conflicted arc in the process (though it doesn’t really pay this off). Elsewhere, the search for Loretta is augmented by her PR team, consisting of her hilariously misguided social media manager Allison (Patti Harrison), and her dedicated publisher Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), who unfortunately finds herself on the receiving end of the film’s least funny dialogue — mostly alongside The Office’s Oscar Nunez as an idiosyncratic pilot, who simultaneously has too much screen time and yet too little to do.

Each time the focus moves away from Tatum and Bullock — more specifically, from their rapid-fire comedic exchanges — it’s a drag, albeit a largely inoffensive one. However, every time the story returns to them and allows them to let loose, they each paint their characters’ worst moments (Alan’s well-intended idiocy and Loretta’s hardened terseness) with enough vulnerability that it becomes impossible not to enjoy their presence. Not only are they funny, but they’re funny in a deeply honest way, where each barb, each argument, and eventually, each action-packed moment of reconciliation, comes from a character-centric place.

The Lost City leaves a lot to be desired, but when it works, it works like a charm.

The Lost City is bland and messy whenever Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum aren’t on screen. Thankfully, their comedic banter is front and center for most of the film, with Bullock, playing a kidnapped smut author, showing why she still excels at action and romance, and Tatum playing her well-meaning cover model, proving once again that he’s Hollywood’s greatest Himbo.

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The Lost City review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum prove once again that they’re romcom pros

Adventure romcom is the kind of project that’s suctioned itself to its a-list leads like a barnacle on a ship, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Adam Nee, Aaron Nee. Starring: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Brad Pitt. 12A, 112 minutes.

Channing Tatum plays himbos like Mozart wrote symphonies. It’s a delicate art, and about much more than playing dumb. It’s about capturing the sweet, wounded desperation of a man who’s aware of the pressure on him to fulfil some kind of masculine ideal, but wouldn’t even know where to start. The himbo, I’d argue, is an underrated feminist archetype, a positive image of masculinity that simultaneously critiques the kinds of wild expectations we place on men. It’s all about subversion – that what he’s ultimately valued for aren’t the superficial markers of dominance or caveman brawn, but the pure goodness of his heart.

Tatum has spent his entire career perfecting that kind of himbo, whether it be in the 21 Jump Street or Magic Mike films. And, finally, in The Lost City , he’s been paired with his ideal opposite: Sandra Bullock , the actor you call to play very smart women who still can’t seem to keep their lives together, who delivers in ways that are relatable as opposed to patronising. Though the film, directed by brothers Adam and Aaron Nee, presents itself as a 21st-century retread of Robert Zemeckis’s adventure romcom Romancing the Stone , it’s really the kind of project that’s suctioned itself to its A-list leads like a barnacle on a ship.

Bullock is the flinty but loveable Loretta Sage, an archaeologist who’s become an emotional shut-in after her husband’s untimely death. She’s now slumming it – in her opinion – as the author of a series of steamy romance novels. Tatum is Alan Caprison, the cover model and now public face of Loretta’s hunky creation, Dash McMahon. His dedication to the role mildly repulses her. At Loretta’s latest book signing, he answers questions like he somehow had a hand in writing her work, before promptly ripping off his shirt. Alan, in a way, has become the physical manifestation of her own self-loathing. It doesn’t help that her publicist, Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), insists that she turns up to the event in a sequinned jumpsuit so tight that it forces her to shuffle around like someone wrapped head-to-toe in medical bandages.

It’s not the ideal fit for what happens next. Loretta is kidnapped by the unloved son (a very game Daniel Radcliffe ) of a media mogul, Abigail Fairfax, who’s convinced the tidbits of historical knowledge littered throughout her books make her the key to finding the lost Crown of Fire. The treasure is said to be buried deep beneath a volcanic island out in the Atlantic, somewhere in the ruins of The Lost City of D, which has recently exposed itself to the elements. Well, technically, as Abigail points out, it’s exposed “just the tip”. Expect much more innuendo where that came from.

Channing Tatum and the eternal appeal of Hollywood’s himbo king

The story here leans pretty hard on its “don’t judge a book by its cover” lessons, sometimes in the literal sense – Alan chastises Loretta for dismissing her books as nothing but low-brow shlock. But Bullock and Tatum are such dedicated professionals in the romcom field that it almost feels a little rude not to fall for their eventual romance. It’s lovely to watch the way Loretta warms up to Alan once his self-imposed image of masculinity starts to chip away, as she tenderly applies eczema cream to his back while laying out how she’d describe the moment in one of her novels. The Lost City , for the most part, finds that sweet spot between goofy and sincere, especially during the scenes where Tatum’s Alan tries to match up to the mercenary hired to rescue Loretta, played by none other than Brad Pitt . The star flips his long, blonde locks around like he’s back in Legends of the Fall , and smoulders with smug self-satisfaction. Tatum, in reaction, flounders magnificently.

Unfortunately, the further away from Tatum and Bullock you get, the more the film struggles. The fact that Patti Harrison, as Loretta’s social media manager, steals away all of her scenes just by being weird enough to call someone’s grandmother a “slut”, highlights how deficient the writing can be in other places. Randolph is stuck playing the Black best friend whose entire existence gravitates around the white protagonist; there’s an attempt to poke fun at the adventure genre’s implicit exoticism that feels awkwardly half-hearted. But if you can force yourself to be myopic enough that nothing outside of its central romance matters? Well, then, The Lost City plays like a dream.

‘The Lost City’ is in cinemas now

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The Lost City Review

13 Apr 2022

The Lost City

Death cannot stop true love; it can only delay it for a while. Or so The Princess Bride taught us. Sure enough, the much bally-hooed death of the big-screen romcom is beginning to look more like a hiatus, because here we are in 2022 with a crowd-pleasing, star-led romance in an exotic location. If much of directors Adam and Aaron Nee’s plot feels like a throwback to an earlier era, and in particular to Romancing The Stone , the humour here is entirely up-to-date and immensely fun.

The familiar bits first: Sandra Bullock steps into Kathleen Turner ’s shoes as a successful romance novelist whose personal life is a mess. But unlike Joan Wilder, Bullock’s Loretta is grieving a lost husband, and seems irritable at the success of her own books. In place of Michael Douglas ’ tough jungle guide we have Channing Tatum ’s gentle cover model Alan, who’s nursing both a crush on and a grudge against Loretta, the latter for her refusal to take her own books seriously. However, when she’s kidnapped by a media billionaire’s son, Abigail Fairfax ( Daniel Radcliffe ), Alan swings ineffectually into action, and soon our two heroes are lost in the jungle of a small island, bickering and perhaps bonding as they try to find safety.

None of this is particularly new, of course. Bullock has played the wary, uptight over-achiever before; Tatum’s given us previous variations on witless-yet-beautiful; even a bit with leeches has been done before. But the film finds nuance to season the archetypes. There’s more than lip service paid to Loretta’s grief and her dashed dreams of serious scholarship, and while she’s not immune to Alan’s looks, you can see  why he wouldn’t be on her radar. Tatum, meanwhile, gamely plays the bimbo role, but manages to inject just enough edge to suggest  that Alan’s brain is merely underutilised and not entirely absent.

This movie is like its star’s jumpsuit: sparkly, gorgeous and entirely frivolous.

With the stars carrying the film along, the Nees can add emotion and humour in the detail. They mine laughs from Alan’s phone contacts and Fairfax’s cheese board, while costume designer Marlene Stewart puts Bullock in a fuschia-coloured sequinned jumpsuit that plays well against the otherwise standard jungle aesthetics. Brad Pitt ’s hyper-capable survival trainer, Jack Trainer, is an awe-inspiring embodiment of the romance novel archetype who threatens even the usually laid-back Alan, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph does a lot with very little as Loretta’s editor. Radcliffe even comes close to saying something true about the entitlement and self-righteousness of the super-wealthy as a black-sheep billionaire.

Really, though, you have to want to find deeper meanings here. This movie is like its star’s jumpsuit: sparkly, gorgeous and entirely frivolous. It coasts by on charisma and comedic talent, on dancing and daring, on stunning locations (the Dominican jungle) and stakes that are high enough to hold the attention and not a millimetre higher. You will predict almost every beat before it arrives and welcome its arrival anyway, because the formula works. The romcom is dead; long live the romcom.

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Andy Garcia's "The Lost City" feels like the distillation of countless conversations and family legends, rehearsed from time immemorial by Cubans who fled their homeland and sought to re-create it in their memories. In every family such stories, repeated endlessly, can become tedious, but there is another sense in which they are a treasured ritual. There was a Cuba, remembered at firsthand only by those who are growing older now, that was a beloved place, and stopped existing when Castro came to power in 1959.

Garcia's family lived in that older Cuba, and so did Guillermo Cabrera Infante , the Cuban writer and film critic who wrote this screenplay. (The project, long discussed, was not easy for Garcia to finance; Infante died in February 2005.) Infante and Garcia do not deceive themselves that the old Cuba was a paradise: It is seen as corrupt, controlled in key areas by the Mafia, and built on a class system in which many were poor so that a few could be rich. The problem is that Castro did not cure the ills so much as distribute them more evenly, so that more could be miserable. Garcia and Infante are against the old and the new, against both the rotten Batista regime and the disappointment of Castro and Che Guevara. There is a moment in the film when a senator agrees that Batista must be overthrown, but argues wistfully that it must be done "constitutionally." Fat chance.

Garcia stars in the film as Fico Fellove, a suave operator who owns and runs a Havana nightclub named El Tropico. Showgirls perform a Vegas-style revue, the customers are elegant and intriguing, and at the door their big sleek American cars glisten in the neon lights. Fico wants this life to continue forever, and like Rick in " Casablanca " he is not particularly political. At a time when Batista's grip seems to be weakening, when reports from the mountains magnify Castro's popularity, he receives a visitor: The gangster Meyer Lansky ( Dustin Hoffman ), who wants to become Fico's partner in turning El Tropico into a casino. It is the kind of offer Fico can refuse, although that might not be prudent.

Fico's brothers have a different orientation in the dying days of the old regime. Luis ( Nestor Carbonell ) embraces the revolutionary cause, and Ricardo ( Enrique Murciano ) journeys into the mountains to fight with Castro. The rest of the family deplores their decisions; Fico comforts Aurora ( Ines Sastre ), Luis' wife, who complains that her husband is away so much he must be cheating. He is not cheating but rebelling, but never mind: Fico ends by falling in love with her himself.

Commenting on all of these events is an enigmatic character named The Writer, played by Bill Murray as a jester who speaks in jokes that contain the truth. His running commentary on Lansky is bold to the point of recklessness. It is never quite explained who The Writer is, although some articles on the film claim he represents the screenwriter, Infante.

If so, he gives Infante an opening into the story that he can use to speak directly, if obliquely, of the absurdity of the times. Indeed Infante himself played such a role under both Batista and Castro, saying what he believed in such a way that no one could be quite certain he had gone too far. Batista nevertheless jailed him, and Castro uneasily made him a cultural attache in Belgium, not then a key posting. A lifelong communist, Infante felt Castro betrayed the party's principles, and eventually chose exile. His Twentieth Century Job , a collection of his movie reviews, has some of the same wry dubious philosophy expressed by The Writer in the film.

I enjoyed Murray and his scenes, but the character doesn't fit with the rest of the film. Fico Fellove is not a particularly witty or sunny character and does not suffer fools gladly. Why does he make an exception for The Writer? There are scenes where we almost wonder if The Writer is intended to be physically present at all; for all that Fico takes notice of him, perhaps he is a ghost visible only to us.

The main line of "The Lost City" involves the fall of Batista, Castro's entry into Havana, the divisions that opens up in the family, and the quick disillusionment with the new regime, which is as arbitrary as the old, and more dogmatic. A musicians' strike at the nightclub symbolizes the way power is misused by those who have only just possessed it. Fico's loss is magnified by the heartbreak of the old musician who choreographed the shows and danced as a counterpoint to the girls; he has lost his whole world.

The movie evokes that long-ago world carefully and with a certain poetry; it was shot in the Dominican Republic. There is a lot of music, much of it from the period and performed by the same musicians or their successors. The costumes and the interiors set off the way the characters carry themselves, with grace and confidence.

At 143 minutes, the movie is too long, but it has a lot to cover and a lot to say, and I imagine Garcia has a reason for thinking every scene is necessary. There is romance and some action, but it is not a romance or an adventure film; it is a personal version of what happened in Cuba and what it felt like at the time. Communicating that effectively, it lacks a larger view; newsreel footage covers for historical events that another film might have tried to stage, and the implication is that for characters like Fico, the revolution took place more in the news than in his own life, and he was not quite prepared for such an upheaval. At the end he and a great many others leave Cuba for Miami or New York, where, for Fico, Meyer Lansky awaits.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Lost City (2006)

Rated R violence

144 minutes

Andy Garcia as Fico Fellove

Bill Murray as The Writer

Ines Sastre as Aurora Fellove

Dustin Hoffman as Meyer Lansky

Tomas Milian as Don Federico Fellove

Steven Bauer as Capt. Castel

Nestor Carbonell as Luis Fellove

William Marquez as Rodney

Julio Oscar Mechoso as Colonel Candela

Enrique Murciano as Ricardo Fellove

Elizabeth Pena as Miliciana Munoz

Millie Perkins as Dona Cecilia Fellove

Tony Plana as The Emcee

Directed by

Andy Garcia
Guillermo Cabrera Infante

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The Lost City review: A big screwball swing for old-school action-comedy

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are 'Lost' and on the loose in a breezy, patently ridiculous throwback to '80s romps.

Somewhere in the mists of time before IP and franchise, there used to be a lot more of a certain kind of sunny, modestly ambitious movie that might have been called a romp: blithe action comedies in which two pretty people fight and blunder and fall for each other, and maybe romance a few stones along the way.

Almost everything about The Lost City (in theaters March 25) feels familiar in that sense, and comforting, too: a cheerfully shambolic grab-bag of shenanigans and movie stars with enough screwball wit and self-awareness to drag it into 2022. It's also a fitting send-off for Sandra Bullock , who recently announced her retirement , or at least a furlough from acting, and was essentially forged in stuff like this. Here she's Loretta Sage, a woman who writes bestselling bodice-rippers she can barely stand; Channing Tatum is Dash, the genetically blessed himbo whose fame as the palomino-maned cover model for her novels have made the two of them synonymous, much to her chagrin.

Except his real name is actually Alan, and the hair, like his life skills, is largely an illusion. He's only ever really had to play the hero on embossed paperbacks, so when Loretta is plucked from a book-tour event by unknown assailants and kidnapped, he feels compelled to prove that he can be that guy in real life. And when her Apple Watch pings somewhere over the Atlantic, her panicked publicist, Beth (Da'vine Joy Randolph), agrees to let him go ahead, largely because he's the only one with anything resembling an action plan.

That plan pretty much begins and ends with texting Jack Trainer ( Brad Pitt ), a freelance mercenary he met once at a meditation retreat. Jack is everything Alan isn't: combat expert, casual intellectual, man of substance and advanced sleeper holds. Thankfully, he also accepts crypto, and it doesn't take them long to track Loretta down on the remote tropical island where the black-sheep son of a media mogul called Abigail Fairfax ("It's a gender-neutral name!") has taken her in the hopes of using her knowledge of ancient cuneiforms to track down an ancient treasure known as the Crown of Fire.

In other words, it's all ridiculous, and everyone here, including directing duo Adam and Aaron Nee ( Band of Robbers ) knows it. But Fairfax is played by Daniel Radcliffe, who is clearly having more fun than most actors recently conscripted to represent today's favored screen bogeyman, the feckless tech-bro villain (See also: Free Guy , Old Guard , Venom , The Matrix Revolutions ). His Abigail is a perfect twerp, the peevish flipside to Pitt's Most Interesting Man in the World shtick. Randolph's harried, brutally honest Beth and Patti Harrison, as a daffy social-media manager, also regularly manage to steal their scenes from the margins.

But nothing in Lost City would really hang together without its main pair, whose chemistry movies like this inevitably live or die on. She's a trademark Bullock heroine, forever vacillating between serene self-assurance and high anxiety; he's like a happy Labrador, winning hearts and minds while heedlessly crashing into things. Their rapport feels both meticulously market-tested and somehow gratifyingly natural, and strong enough too to withstand a careening, unabashedly cartoonish plot (penned by Horrible Bosses director Seth Gordon) whose into-the-sunset endgame is already guaranteed. They're just here to play with wigs and passports and pratfalls and for two breezy, anesthetizing hours, make the world outside disappear. Grade: B

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‘bridgerton’ & ‘fair play’ actress phoebe dynevor signs with wme, ‘the lost city’ sxsw review: sandra bullock and channing tatum make slapstick comedy look good.

By Valerie Complex

Valerie Complex

Associate Editor/Film Writer

'The Lost City' Trailer: Sandra Bullock's Author Finds Herself Inside A Romance Novel In Paramount Adventure Pic

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Dressed as a Solid Gold dancer, Loretta’s first stop on tour is a disaster. No one is there for her. They want to see Dash shirtless. After being annoyed by the ordeal, she leaves the event and is subsequently kidnapped and brought face to face with billionaire Abigail Fairfax ( Daniel Radcliffe ). He’s been searching for the lost city of D to find the crown of fire—both are things she’s written about in her books. Fairfax located the city but needs her to translate precisely where the crown is held and believes Loretta is the only one who can translate the map of its location. Alan is the only person who witnessed Loretta being taken by strange men and plans to rescue her by any means necessary.

The Lost City takes a lot of its cues from films like Indiana Jones , Romancing the Stone, and every other movie of this type. It fails to stand on its own with so much being pulled from earlier creative works, but that’s not a bad thing. The Lost City is fun, and the sparks between the lead actors pump life into this film. Individually, Bullock and Tatum are incredibly charismatic as individuals, but as a duo, they create a rhythm of movement and sound that causes their dynamite chemistry to leap off-screen and smack you in the face.

They also aren’t afraid of slapstick or physical comedy. When Miss Congeniality premiered at SXSW in 2000, Bullock , for a time, was the reigning queen of comedy. After starring in Paul Feig’s The Heat , the actress starred in more serious roles and darker comedies, but with The Lost City , Bullock shows she’s still got it in her to fall and look silly for laughs. Tatum also has a résumé filled with primarily comedic roles, which he has honed and excels at. He takes pride in using his looks and charm, acting like a class clown.

The directors’ work isn’t remarkable in any way, but it’s certainly easy to tell they love what they do. Bullock and Tatum are the glue that holds this film together and are infinitely more interesting than what’s happening around them. Without them, The Lost City would not have sustained through its nearly two-hour run time. The duo is naturally funny and knows how to add levels of vulnerability to any role they tackle. Most of all, they know how to have a good time, and the energy they emit is infectious.

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Movie Review: “The Lost City,” Starring Daniel Radcliffe

by Lucy O'Shea · Published March 30, 2022 · Updated December 31, 2022

by Clare Worley

True: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are each at their best when they’re funny, and both at the same time must be funnier. So it is in The Lost City , an ultimately charming adventure comedy with more than a touch of Romancing the Stone , Jumanji , and Nim’s Island about it. Of course, every good adventure needs a villain: Daniel Radcliffe’s on dapper duty here as a treasure hunter searching for a priceless artifact, no matter the cost.

Bullock is Loretta, a successful romance writer (How successful? Her kitchen is shiny; her bath is huge) struggling with grief and writer’s block after her husband’s death. Tatum is Alan, the cover model for Loretta’s books, who bursts into the movie looking like Fabio and using phrases like “human mummy” more than once. Loretta wants to withdraw from public life, but Daniel Radcliffe’s antagonist, Fairfax, forces her to use her archaeological knowledge to find an artifact on a remote island (trust me, the actual details don’t really matter). Loretta = kidnapped; Alan = determined to be a hero, no matter how unqualified he is. Hijinks, quite naturally, ensue. If you’ve seen anything in the action/adventure-comedy genre before, you’ll know almost all the beats before you reach them.

It isn’t news that Bullock and Tatum are good at screwball comedy, but they’re a fun combination. Radcliffe looks like he’s having a blast in the gorgeous jungle scenery, and his cold-blooded, smirking, totally amoral billionaire could serve as a neat Succession audition tape if he wanted it to.

Daniel Radcliffe as Fairfax in "The Lost City".

In support, Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Loretta’s publisher, Beth, is a show-stealer in a role that’s a step up from “sassy Black sidekick” at least.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt’s turn as The-Ghost-of-Hemsworth-Yet-To-Come is laugh-out-loud funny. His scenes with Tatum are some of the funniest in the film.

Now for the downsides: not all the comedy belongs here. There are some smutty jokes – it’s not called the “Lost City of D” for nothing – which are amusing in isolation but don’t feel like they fit in a film that is more sweet than salty. The social media assistant makes jokes at least five years out of date, and the character adds less than she detracts, sadly.

I’m also disheartened that Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ song “Red Right Hand” (aka the Peaky Blinders theme) is becoming the 2020s edition of Leonard Cohen’s overplayed-to-irrelevance “Hallelujah” and is sorely misplaced as a musical cue here.

The film’s predictability is only a downside if you make it so, and there are a few moments of genuine “what the actual?!” It’s solidly set in a Hollywood Jungle: the creepy-crawlies only come out on cue – though it’s quite a cue. Although it avoids feeling like it’s 90% green-screen (oh hai Death on the Nile ), there’s an artificiality that adds to the overall sense of low stakes throughout the film.

The Lost City is at its best when in “wacky good fun” mode, is less accomplished in moments of sincerity, and may be forgotten by most within a few months, but spending nearly two hours with this company is no chore.

The Lost City opens exclusively in theatres on March 25 in the US and April 15 in the UK.

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DVD & Streaming

The Lost City

Action/Adventure , Comedy , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

March 25, 2022
Sandra Bullock as Loretta Sage; Channing Tatum as Alan; Daniel Radcliffe as Fairfax; Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Beth; Brad Pitt as Jack Trainer; Patti Harrison as Pratt Caprison; Oscar Nunez as Adrian Austin

Home Release Date

May 10, 2022
Aaron and Adam Nee

Distributor

Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

Loretta Sage is suffering from a serious case of lover’s block.

Not writer’s block. The novelist can string words together just fine. But the thing is, Loretta writes romance novels. And honestly, ever since her husband died, Loretta just hasn’t been in the mood for romance.

Her latest book , The Lost City of D (featuring her popular protagonists Lovemore and Dash) was as steamy as a cold shower, as sultry as a tax audit. And even though her romances have sold incredibly well, Loretta feels as though The Lost City of D might be her last. Dash can dash off, for all she cares—yellow hair streaming in the sunset—and leave Loretta alone.

But first, she’ll have to participate in one more excruciating book tour—answering the same questions, plastering on the same fake smiles. Worse yet, the tour includes Alan Caprison, the beefy, blond model who—thanks to myriad appearances on Loretta’s book covers—has become synonymous with Dash. In fact, it seems that most of Loretta’s fans actually want to see Alan . And preferably without his shirt.

But as the first stop on the tour winds down, Loretta meets a fan who wants to talk with her . It would’ve been more flattering, perhaps, if the fan (a rich fellow named Fairfax) hadn’t also sent a couple of goons to kidnap her. Fairfax, you see, isn’t that interested in the plot of the Lost City of D : He’s more interested in the actual lost city Loretta wrote about, and the treasure that might be found there.

Fairfax knows that before Loretta became a romance novelist, she was a lost-language specialist: He believes that she based her book on real history. In fact, Fairfax knows it: He found Loretta’s Lost City and now owns the island on which it sits.

But now he needs Loretta’s help. See, somewhere in that archaeological ruin lies the fabled Crown of Fire, a bit of treasure that must be worth ever-so-much. Moreover, he’s uncovered a strip of cloth written in a language lost to everyone but Loretta. He believes that it might—no, it must —point to the fabulous crown. And he needs to retrieve it quickly, before the island’s volcano buries it underneath a few layers of lava.

Loretta politely declines to work with Fairfax, but refusal is not an option. The novelist is promptly chloroformed and whisked off to this island paradise/prison/potential tomb. She’ll help Fairfax: Oh, yes. Fairfax will make sure of it.

It’s just the sort of scenario that Loretta might write about, actually—one she’d neatly resolve with heroic Dash riding in on a white horse, hair gleaming, muscles flexing, gun booming, dimples dimpling.

Alas, Dash isn’t real. But Alan is. Yeah, that’s right: The cover model. Sure, Alan may not have two doctorates or years of martial arts training like Dash. But he is a certified Crossfit trainer, and that counts for something, right?

Positive Elements

So, yes, Alan’s a little out of his depth here. He dives into this adventure despite being allergic to water. (A little dip in a jungle river gives him a serious case of eczema.) But he’s kind of attracted to the author, and he’s willing to put his life on the line to save her. He also turns out to be a pretty decent, kind-hearted fellow, too—not just Dash’s mindless, muscle-bound stand-in. You might say (and the movie actually does) that Loretta learns a bit about not judging book models by their cover. Or something.

Beth, Loretta’s publisher, is equally dedicated to the writer. While she doesn’t come swinging into the jungle like Alan does, she works tirelessly to rescue Loretta—buying tickets, twisting arms, riding goat-laden cargo planes as she tries to track down her star writer. And she gets a little help herself from Adrian, the owner of the aforementioned cargo plane, who aids the party in unexpected ways.

Spiritual Elements

Someone calls Adrian an angel in passing. “How did you know?” he says. Some characters participate in what appears to be a meditation class, and we learn that Alan met a character at a meditation retreat. We hear an exclamation of “Holy Christmas!” We hear a quote attributed to Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism: “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”

Sexual Content

Fairfax refers to Loretta as the “sex book writer.” And gathering from the snippets we hear from her books, that feels pretty accurate. Readings are filled with suggestive imagery and titillating verbiage (without crossing the line into straight-up verbal pornography), and Loretta coaches someone on how to pace a book’s erotic elements for full emotional appeal. One night, as she tries to treat the eczema on Alan’s exposed back, Alan asks how she might “write” that scene and make it romantic. Her narration is filled with erotic descriptions and ends with the heroine’s request to have sex.

Loretta and Alan don’t physically replay Loretta’s sensual narration, but (obviously) a mutual attraction does develop between them, and they smooch a time or two. They also, comically, share a hammock. Loretta also sees all of Alan’s anatomy after a leech-infested wade through a river: Alan exposes his buttocks to her (and the camera), and Loretta has to pull leeches off his posterior. He then turns around so she can inspect his crotch: (She makes several comments on what she sees, but the audience doesn’t itself see anything.)

Alan often goes shirtless, and Loretta quips that the model finds an excuse to remove his shirt during every public appearance. (During a mutual appearance during the book tour, the audience convinces Loretta to remove Dash’s shirt for him—though the removal attempt goes awry.) During that same tour stop, Loretta’s publicist forces Loretta to wear what the writer describes as a “glitter onesie.” It reveals quite a bit of cleavage and is quite tight—so much so that Loretta claims the fabric is climbing up into numerous areas. (She wears the outfit for most of the rest of the movie, though the onesie’s leggings eventually are ripped off.) She smuggles a bit of cloth in her own outfit, tucking it between her breast and the onesie’s fabric.

Alan helps Loretta scale a cliff by pushing his head into her crotch (thus helping to push her up). Beth also wears outfits that showcase cleavage. In a physical manifestation of part of Loretta’s book draft, Lovemore and Dash lie next together—and at first it would seem they’re in the throes of post-coital bliss. (That turns out not to be the case.) We hear crass references to body parts and sexual activity, along with both intentional and unintentional double entendres. Loretta takes a bath, and we see her from the shoulders up. Later, in the clutches of bad guys, she exposes her shoulder seductively. She describes herself as a “sapio-sexual,” which she says means that she finds intelligence sexy. Someone calls another woman a “slut” (in what the caller hopes is an affectionate, chummy way).

Violent Content

In a fairly shocking scene—shocking, in part, because of the movie’s PG-13 rating—someone is shot in the head, sending blood and brain matter everywhere. A good bit of the gore seems to land on Alan’s face (including his mouth), and he complains that he can “taste” the victim’s thoughts.

A man falls from a ledge, apparently to his doom. Two others fall off a cliff after crashing into each other on motorcycles. (“Perhaps they’re fine,” Loretta suggests, though that seems unlikely.) Someone is set ablaze via cigar ashes and alcohol. Someone’s knocked off the roof of a moving SUV/tank. A few people are rendered unconscious due to sleeper holds. Others are knocked out during fights, which involve fists and feet and drinking glasses and car doors.

Two people nearly drown. Guns are pointed and sometimes fired. A tomb holds the skeletal remains of two people embracing, and others are nearly buried alive in the same tomb. A volcano threatens the safety of many. A scene in one of Loretta’s books depicts a tomb littered with poisonous snakes. Loretta is overcome by chloroform.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear two uses of the s-word along with several other milder profanities, including “a–,” “crap” and “h—.” God’s name is misused nearly 15 times, and Jesus’ name is abused thrice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

“Why can’t your own personal tank have its own mini-bar?” Fairfax asked. It’s a rhetorical question, of course, because his personal tank has one. He enjoys his whiskey and drinks it often. Others imbibe as well. We see, for instance, a pre-kidnap Loretta sip a glass of iced Chardonnay in the bathtub. Someone smokes a cigar—with unfortunate consequences. (Turns out, smoking really can kill you.)

Other Negative Elements

We hear references to bat feces, and a cave mouth is compared to a “troll anus.” Someone urinates in a body of water. Both Alan and Loretta gag while dealing with leeches. After Loretta kicks a trash can over, she’s appalled with herself for littering.

As Loretta and Alan plot out their next move—trying to decide whether to get off the island or dive deeper into the jungle to find the fabled Crown of Fire—Alan turns to Loretta.

“This is your story,” he tells her. “How do you want to write it?”

Someone might’ve posed the same question to the movie’s screenwriters.

The Lost City can feel a little lost itself. While it always aims to be a romantic adventure comedy, a la 1984’s Romancing the Stone , it swings wildly on its PG-13 pendulum. Though our protagonists rarely kiss and never have sex, Loretta’s raunchy prose and the screenplay’s naughty entendres push this blushingly out of bounds for most families. For much of its runtime, the movie seems to intentionally avoid both death and blood—and then in one shocking moment, that restraint is blown to pieces … along with part of someone’s head, apparently.

With just a little more restraint, The Lost City could’ve been unexpectedly navigable. But because of a handful of scenes, the film is unexpectedly ooky. It’s almost as if the studio received a nice, sweet, funny script and hired Family Guy’ s Seth MacFarlane to handle the rewrites.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The Lost City Can’t Quite Capture That Old Movie-Star Magic

I have a confession to make: I have never warmed up to Sandra Bullock as a star. It isn’t that I haven’t enjoyed her presence onscreen. It’s just that on her own, she doesn’t feel like a supernova; she dims or brightens by virtue of whom she is acting against. When it’s Keanu Reeves? That’s when she truly shines, in movies like 1994’s Speed, where her determination and wit perfectly flirt with Reeves’s doting machismo. (I even have a soft spot for their dynamic in the admittedly weird 2006 romantic drama, The Lake House. ) She has the appropriate charm in Miss Congeniality , a 2000 film that again highlights her prickly steadfastness while giving her physical comedy alongside seasoned scene partners like Michael Caine and Candice Bergen. In 2013’s Gravity, her drive is so well-harnessed that the chemistry she cultivates with George Clooney persists long after he disappears. But as an unyielding matriarch in The Blind Side , a 2009 film built on baldly uncomfortable racial politics that garnered her a Best Actress Oscar, she fails to feel whole or engaging. As the supposed center of the film, she lacks any force beyond curdling white saviorism.

The Lost City , released this weekend, is the kind of film meant to rest on the laurels of star power. Not just Bullock’s, but her immediate cast members’, too. The film — which scans as Romancing the Stone cosplay updated for the current moment — is the kind of romantic action-adventure caper we haven’t seen in decades. It doesn’t waste time. At a fleet 92 minutes, the film dives into a story about Loretta Sage (Bullock), a highly successful romance novelist whose life has been defined by loneliness since the death of her beloved husband. Her apparent knowledge of a lost city — reflected in her swooning recent book — gets her kidnapped by a madcap, disgruntled billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who believes she can locate the priceless treasure he’s been spending oodles of cash to find. Loretta proves to be more capable than her captors realize, and she’s not alone — the sweet himbo who models on her covers, Alan (Channing Tatum), sets out to save her, leading to high jinks and, theoretically at least, romantic sparks set against the backdrop of a dangerous jungle on a forgotten island. “The movie comes with an additional set of stakes specific to Hollywood’s post-pandemic future,” the New York Times ’ Kyle Buchanan posits . “As the theatrical business constricts, will people still go see an old-fashioned comic adventure where the actors lack any superpowers besides A-list charisma?” Here’s the problem. The Lost City may have the A-listers, but it doesn’t possess the craft necessary to spotlight their skills. Audiences shouldn’t be blamed if they are cold to the film. How can we expect people to respond to adult movies like this if they lack the charm of the genres they’re plundering for inspiration?

The Lost City isn’t terrible, just aggressively mediocre. It is the kind of movie you put on in the background after coming across it on TBS while you fold laundry on a Sunday afternoon. If anything, The Lost City makes evident not a lack of stars, but a persistent inability on the part of contemporary Hollywood to know what to do with them . The idea to do a thinly masked Romancing the Stone revamp with an older actress (Bullock is a few years shy of 60) whose defining characteristic is her intelligence — who innately radiates warmth and romance and adventure — is a good one. But the makers of The Lost City think pointing a camera at her is enough. They forget Romancing the Stone had Robert Zemeckis shepherding into existence a script by Diane Thomas, a waitress turned screenwriter who died tragically and young. The Lost City has Adam and Aaron Nee helming a story by a bunch of men and Dana Fox. It’s romance by committee, and no one has any idea how to capture the heat necessary to make the pair work.

The Lost City aims to be quick-witted, giddy, a light delight. It’s mostly inoffensive, save for one arguably major problem: the weird colonialism lurking in the story and the patronizingly thin portrayal of the Indigenous people who inhabit the make-believe island on which the main action takes place. It’s an aspect not new to The Lost City, evident in these romance-adventure flicks focused on white folks finding love against a backdrop of so-called exoticism. Once you notice this grating aspect, you can’t help but squirm. The discomfort isn’t helped by the directors and cinematographer, who can’t capture the awe of natural surroundings or light the actors in ways that truly highlight the beauty of their bodies. Instead they are framed, lit, and blocked in ways that obscure their gorgeousness rather than put it on a pedestal. (A dramatic cave sequence near the end is so drab it’s embarrassing.)

But perhaps the most glaring issue is the lack of proper chemistry between Bullock and Tatum, who can’t manufacture the friction required of a destined romance. I can see why, on the page, Tatum and Bullock have allure. He’s inviting but not overbearing in his charm, and great at playing carefree men with an inner sweetness and a knack for dancing. She has a fierce sense of self and undaunted intellect. But there’s no “It” factor. You know what I mean: that undeniably potent fire between actors that makes us want to bask in their glow and also root for them to take their clothes off and fall into bed. For a film about a romance novelist that is trying to exist within a very specific canon of adventure films, there’s a stunning lack of sexiness. So when the two finally kiss at the very end of the film, it feels perfunctory — as if the film just remembered, “Oh yeah, sure, they should have some physical connection.” Bullock has a more intriguing connection with Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt), a former Navy SEAL and full-time badass who is introduced chomping on the innards of a coconut. Alan ropes him into helping save Loretta in a cameo that doesn’t last long but leaves the most intense impression. Pitt knows what this film needs and how to skewer his own image. (Has anyone in Hollywood leaned into the sensuality of his own consumption as much as this man?) His long blond hair cascades behind him as the bombs he’s planted go off, bringing a twinge of memories of his early-1990s heartthrob status in Legends of the Fall . His physicality (and that of his stuntmen) is spry, graceful. When Loretta flirts with him and asks why the hell is he so handsome, with a glint in his eye, he responds, “My father was a weatherman.” It’s the kind of specificity and élan the rest of the film lacks.

It’s clear the moment Pitt is onscreen what his fate will be, but it’s a brief ride I enjoyed being on. The remaining film is listless and tired. Sure, Radcliffe is aiming for gonzo intensity. As Loretta’s agent, Da’Vine Joy Randolph is trying her damndest to bring energy to the film, but all I was left feeling was disappointment that Hollywood can’t stop falling into the “Black best friend” trap. Everything in the story feels micromanaged, all the edges smoothed off. Even when Loretta and Alan witness a hidden tomb encased in verdant foliage, with the molten lava of a volcano framing the discovery, I felt neither curiosity nor wonder. I fixated instead on the smoothness and lack of texture of the scenario. In the end, The Lost City never trips the wire in the brain of pure pleasure — visual, emotional, or otherwise.

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Review: 'The Lost City' is big, dumb, and a little fun

by RYAN PAINTER, KUTV

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum star in Paramount Pictures' "THE LOST CITY."{ }(Photo: Paramount Pictures)

The Lost City 3 out of 5 Stars Directors: Aaron Nee, Adam Nee Writers: Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam Nee Starring: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Brad Pitt Genre: Adventure, Comedy Rated: PG-13 for violence and some bloody images, suggestive material, partial nudity and language.

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) – Synopsis: A romance novelist is kidnapped by a wealthy sociopath with a bruised ego because believes she knows the location of ancient treasure.

Review: The poster for “The Lost City” features Channing Tatum pushing a wheelbarrow containing Sandra Bullock who is sitting on a chair dressed in a purple sequin suit with explosion acting as their shadows. Other cast members are haphazardly photoshopped into the flames. A medium sized Daniel Radcliffe holds a lamp (it’s daytime) looking intensely into the distance while giant Tatum and Bullock pose in front of an active volcano. It might have been designed by a 12-year-old on his iPad. That’s not a criticism. In fact, I salute everyone at Paramount Pictures for their ability to sum up the tone of “The Lost City” in the poster. It’s juvenile nonsense. The filmmakers know it, the studio knows it, and most certainly the scenery-chewing cast know it as well.

Bullock stars as romance novelist Loretta Sage who upon completing her new novel sets out on a promo tour. Her heart isn’t in it. The death of her husband has taken the wind out of her sails. She’s reclusive. Depressed. She’s annoyed by everything and everyone. Particularly Adam (Tatum), her cover model who has forgotten that the stories she writes aren’t real.

Enter Abigail Fairfax (Radcliffe), the self-consumed son of a media mogul who is deeply bruised by his father gifting the company to his brother. Abigail’s attention has been turned to finding a legendary crown. A crown that Abigail believes only Loretta, who worked the crown into her latest book, can help him find. Loretta isn’t interested. So, Abigail kidnaps her and takes her away to the island where he believes the crown is buried.

Adam feels like it is his job to save her. So, Beth ( Da'Vine Joy Randolph ), Loretta’s publicist, Jack Trainer ( Brad Pitt ). Adam begs to tag along. Nothing goes to plan. Not for Abigail, Loretta, or Jack. Adam doesn’t really have a plan. Not until everything goes wrong.

The first half of “The Lost City” is a little too dumb for its own good. The final act plays better, feels a little smarter. Maybe I’ve just warmed to the material. It’s always silly, occasionally funny, often a bit of fun, but isn’t on par with top-shelf Bullock like “ The Heat ” (or “ Gravity ” if you want to stray into her dramatic work). It works well enough even if it is all sugar and empty calories.

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COMMENTS

The Lost City movie review & film summary (2022)
Loretta and Alan's eventual romance is unavoidable, but "The Lost City" does a great job exploring the mounting chemistry between Bullock and Tatum's characters. In particular, the movie highlights Alan's emotional intelligence and unwavering support. He may be the kind of guy who refers to Loretta as a "human mummy," but he also ...
The Lost City
Edward Porter Times (UK) [Channing Tatum's] energetic and eager to please — virtues he shares with the film. Rated: 3/5 Aug 24, 2022 Full Review Wenlei Ma News.com.au The Lost City is exactly ...
The Lost City
The Lost City is a terrific throwback to studio romcoms of the 90s and 00s, with two true-blue movie star performances from Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 ...
The Lost City Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 12 ): Kids say ( 27 ): Treasure hunting + adventure + comedy + romance seems like a formula for cinematic success, and, indeed, Paramount Pictures has struck gold here. Giving off Romancing the Stone vibes, The Lost City has a hilarious script that's made even funnier with perfect casting.
'The Lost City' Review: Raiders of the 1980s Blockbusters
Like "Romancing the Stone," "The Lost City" opens with a scene from a book — cue the purple prose and dashing hero — that its novelist heroine is writing. In "The Lost City ...
Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in 'The Lost City': Film Review
The Lost City. The Bottom Line An enjoyable throwback. Release date: March 25 (Paramount Pictures) Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Headliners) Cast: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da ...
'The Lost City' Review: Sandra Bullock's Guilty-Pleasure ...
'The Lost City' Review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum Are Cute Together in Guilty-Pleasure Treasure Movie Reviewed at SXSW Film Festival (Headliners), March 12, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13.
The Lost City review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum ...
The Lost City finally fills in the very specific movie gap that The Mummy left behind. Channing Tatum, Sandra Bullock, and Daniel Radcliffe bring back the high-energy, high-stakes action-romance
'The Lost City' is silly, sexy, movie-star fun
Review. 'The Lost City' is silly, sexy, movie-star fun. There are so many Sandra Bullocks, and there are so many Channing Tatums. Putting these two in a movie together could give you the gritty ...
The Lost City (2022)
The Lost City: Directed by Aaron Nee, Adam Nee. With Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph. 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.
'The Lost City' review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum charm
March 24, 2022 1:46 PM PT. Midway through the tomb-raiding, car-crashing, butt-baring shenanigans of "The Lost City," Channing Tatum pauses to remind Sandra Bullock not to judge a book by its ...
The Lost City Review
The Lost City is a decent action-comedy that coasts on the presence of its stars. Focus Reset ... All Reviews Editor's Choice Game Reviews Movie Reviews TV Show Reviews Tech Reviews. Discover. Videos.
The Lost City review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum prove once
The Lost City, for the most part, finds that sweet spot between goofy and sincere, especially during the scenes where Tatum's Alan tries to match up to the mercenary hired to rescue Loretta ...
The Lost City
Brilliant, but reclusive author Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) has spent her career writing about exotic places in her popular romance-adventure novels featuring handsome cover model Alan (Channing Tatum), who has dedicated his life to embodying the hero character, "Dash." While on tour promoting her new book with Alan, Loretta is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who ...
The Lost City Review
13 Apr 2022. Original Title: The Lost City. Death cannot stop true love; it can only delay it for a while. Or so The Princess Bride taught us. Sure enough, the much bally-hooed death of the big ...
The Lost City movie review & film summary (2006)
Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch. Andy Garcia's "The Lost City" feels like the distillation of countless conversations and family legends, rehearsed from time immemorial by Cubans who fled their homeland and sought to re-create it in their memories. In every family such stories, repeated endlessly, can become tedious, but there is another ...
The Lost City review: A big screwball swing for old-school action-comedy
The Lost City review: A big screwball swing for old-school action-comedy. Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are 'Lost' and on the loose in a breezy, patently ridiculous throwback to '80s romps.
'The Lost City' Review: Sandra Bullock And Channing Tatum Adventure Movie
The Lost City takes a lot of its cues from films like Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone, and every other movie of this type. It fails to stand on its own with so much being pulled from earlier ...
Movie Review: "The Lost City," Starring Daniel Radcliffe
The Lost City is at its best when in "wacky good fun" mode, is less accomplished in moments of sincerity, and may be forgotten by most within a few months, but spending nearly two hours with this company is no chore. The Lost City opens exclusively in theatres on March 25 in the US and April 15 in the UK.
The Lost City movie review: Is the movie worth watching?
Overall, The Lost City is a fun ride from start to finish. I loved the cast, comedy, and action. I highly recommend checking it out in theaters on Friday. The Lost City hits theaters on March 25 ...
The Lost City
Someone might've posed the same question to the movie's screenwriters. The Lost City can feel a little lost itself. While it always aims to be a romantic adventure comedy, a la 1984's Romancing the Stone, it swings wildly on its PG-13 pendulum. Though our protagonists rarely kiss and never have sex, Loretta's raunchy prose and the ...
The Lost City (2022 film)
The Lost City is a 2022 American action-adventure comedy film directed by Aaron and Adam Nee, who co-wrote the screenplay with Oren Uziel and Dana Fox, based on a story by Seth Gordon. Starring Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Brad Pitt, the film follows a romance novelist and her cover model, who must escape a billionaire who wants her to find a lost ...
The Lost City Review: It Can't Quite Capture Old Movie Magic
The Lost City, released this weekend, is the kind of film meant to rest on the laurels of star power. Not just Bullock's, but her immediate cast members', too. The film — which scans as ...
Review: 'The Lost City' is big, dumb, and a little fun
The Lost City 3 out of 5 Stars Directors: Aaron Nee, Adam Nee Writers: Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam Nee Starring: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Brad Pitt Genre: Adventure, Comedy Rated: PG-13 for ...
Updated June 2024
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Reviewed at SXSW Film Festival (Headliners), March 12, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 112 MIN.

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