THE LOST CITY (2022) – An inoffensive comedy adventure in familiar territory

The Lost City is the kind of movie that you would watch with a built in low expectation. It’s set-up of an initially incompatible and constantly bickering couple thrown unwillingly into a life threatening adventure is a familiar one used often in romantic comedies. Casting likeable and attractive stars like Sandra Bullock with Channing Tatum in the lead comes with the territory. As well as throwing in some familiar faces like Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe as the villain, and a cameo appearance by the one and only Brad Pitt would be like the icing on the cake.

So, at the end of the day, what is there not to like about The Lost City? It is fun, it is funny, and it offers a nice distraction from the hustle and bustle of our lives. Sandra Bullock may look a tad old for this sort of comedy adventure movies (and she actually says this in the movie, well, indirectly anyway), but she still manages to make us smile. Channing Tatum is no doubt eye candy for the ladies but he also has a good comic sense and timing, and he is well paired with Sandra to deliver the gags and light hearted humour, often poking fun at themselves. Daniel Radcliffe is a bloody good actor and he is in a way wasted in this sort of low demanding roles but nevertheless he looks like he is having fun playing the role of a villain. Even he doesn’t get spared by the personal jokes as one character innocently remarked “I thought he was a child at first, but then he had a beard”. Finally there was Brad Pitt making a dramatic grand entrance appearance and stealing the scenes in exaggerated manner. He sportingly acts like a walking talking caricature of himself here!

The Lost City does not have any big scale action sequences or a logical plot. But then, as I said we never really expected these from it. It comes across as an agreeable piece of fast food entertainment that Hollywood churns out in regular intervals, which are geared towards suckers that go for such recycled rubbish. I regrettably admit I sometimes fall into this category and do enjoy these provided they are done right, and with the right chemistry, funny and not overly convoluted. As a comparison, the recent and similar Jungle Cruise was to me, a terrible watch simply because I did not feel the chemistry between its two leading stars, and the jokes were also just not funny. The main difference is that The Lost City did no fall into the trap of trying to impress with the CGI effects and action sequences, and stuck to just having fun with the characters instead.