The Lost City

"If I don't get to this island, my friend, and her cover model, are going to die!"

I'm so pleased that The Lost City exists as a comedy movie with a decent sized budget. Indeed, stand-alone comedy films feel like a pretty rare thing these days. 

Romance author Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) is still mourning the death of her archaeologist husband and has lost interest in her books, especially when she has to do a book tour with her cover model Alan (Channing Tatum). When billionaire Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) kidnaps Loretta to get her find a long lost tomb, Alan attempts to rescue her. 

This very much feels like a modern Romancing the Stone. There's that similar vibe of the romance author going on a jungle adventure and finding love along the way. It's a shame really that the film never tries to be more original and it's very easy to see pretty much every story beat coming. Still, it follows the formula successfully and certainly modernises things in various ways, especially by putting both lead characters equally out of their comfort zone. 

The actors are clearly having a lot of fun here. Bullock and Tatum work well as a lead pair and Bullock is fantastic with the physical comedy here. Daniel Radcliffe nails the entitled rich guy who pretends he's perfectly nice despite being a total jerk. There's also a fun bit with Brad Pitt, essentially an extended cameo, which sees him play up to the action star stereotype in a really fun way. 

There's a lot of physical comedy, largely based on the awkwardness of the lead characters, and the jokes work pretty well though I did think that there could be more. The film has to deal with the romance, the pursuit by Fairfax and the mystery of the lost tomb so it sometimes struggles to get the jokes in. I think it could have done with another writer or two coming in for a joke pass to add a few zingers to reduce the number of drier numbers. That said, there is some heart to the film what with Loretta grieving and Alan turning out to have some quite major self-confidence issues. 

It feels like a modernised version of stuff we've seen before but there's lots of fun to be had here all the same.