Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Lost City’ on Prime Video, in Which Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum Amiably Traipse Through Formula Comedy

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum pair up in The Lost City – now on Prime Video and Paramount+ – a winkity-winking throwback rom-adventure-com in which two wisecrackers find themselves in a barely thinly veiled reiteration of Romancing the Stone, which itself was predated by countless 1940s pictures in which intrepid men with safari hats poked through plastic jungles while women in impractical outfits shrieked at small snakes photographed in closeup to make them look bigger. Which is to say, this isn’t the most original movie you’ll ever see, but with its high-gloss presentation and star power (Daniel Radcliffe and Brad Pitt co-star), it’s absolutely something snooty critics would halfheartedly praise as “a genial timewaster.”

THE LOST CITY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Writer’s block! Loretta Sage (Bullock) has it. Or maybe it’s just ennui and depression – she seems to have run out of ridiculous plots and dopey sexual double-entendres for her bestselling sexy-adventure romance novels, and she also misses her dead husband, and secretly, she’s really an intellectual who digs history and archaeology and crap. But she eventually succumbs to the pressure of her agent, Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), grinds out The Lost City of D and agrees to the irksome dog-and-pony show that comes with promoting it. That means donning a pink sequined jumpsuit, not murdering a Millennial social-media promotions moron (Patti Harrison) who speaks in hashtags, and awkwardly climbing atop a stool on a stage in front of a live audience that doesn’t really want to listen to her because right next to her is the megaripped hunktastic model for her fictional hero and book covers, Alan (Tatum), who’s such a tool, he makes Fabio look like Tatum’s character in Magic Mike.

It’s a bad scene. She soon huffs out of it and into the waiting car of not her driver, but her kidnapper, Abigail Fairfax (Radcliffe), a squillionaire who knows that The Lost City of D is based on an actual real ancient lost city, and wants her to lead him to its treasures. Alan figures out that she’s been snatched by creeps, and takes it upon himself to follow them to a tiny forgotten island, where the treasure must be discovered before the local volcano erupts and turns them all into lunch for hungry lava. Actually, Alan doesn’t do the following – he calls in punchy-kicky-jumpy-shooty Jack Trainer (Pitt) to do the hard stuff while Alan trails along, dragging his designer luggage full of spa accessories.

Now, if you’re the observational sort, you’ll note that Loretta seems to have found herself in a plot that’s a hell of a lot like one she might write – just spread that ironic brie atop a light table cracker and snack on it! Is it just me, or is it inevitable that Pitt is just making an extended cameo here, and that Loretta and Alan will find themselves contending with jungle fauna, dangling off a cliff, accidentally spooning next to a campfire, running in slo-mo away from explosions to the rockin’ ’80s sounds of Pat Benetar, diddling with gender stereotypes, standing in front of unconvincing green-screen effects, saying dumb things like “That’s my hoo-hoo!” and “Wait, I’m the damsel in distress?”, engaging in meta-commentary about schlock entertainment and possibly falling for each other? I CAN NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I’m surprised they didn’t just remake Romancing the Stone. I mean, there are potential BRANDS to think of here! Won’t SOMEbody think of the BRANDS? Otherwise, this is an old-school, brainless romp similar to recent cornball wow-neat adventure Uncharted, but led by a pulp-novelist protagonist who could start an airport-novel workshop group with Alyssa Milano in Brazen and Kristen Davis in Deadly Illusions.

Performance Worth Watching: Even with mediocre material like this, Bullock is endlessly appealing, a gifted physical comedian and ever-wry deliverer of one-liners. She can make stuff like The Lost City funnier than it should be with minimal effort – and it’s preferable to her last couple of overcooked hyperventilations, Bird Box and The Unforgivable.

Memorable Dialogue: Bullock blaps a slow volley at Pitt to smash:

Loretta: Why are you so handsome?

Jack Trainer: My dad was a weatherman.

Sex and Skin: A few good, long, lingering gawks at Tatum’s body double’s bare ass. (One can also assume with fair certainty that Tatum has wholly given up on the concept of body hair.)

Our Take: I’m happy to report that someone wrote jokes for this movie. Actual jokes! Not always funny ones, but you have to appreciate the effort that went into making The Lost City a perfectly watchable ham-slice o’ escapism that not only banks on its star power, but also sets up its game-for-whatever cast to succeed. If this sounds like faint praise for a movie that puts in a little bit of hard work and achieves slightly more than the minimum, well, that’s intentional. It intends to be no more than a formulaic crowd pleaser, and achieves that modest goal.

Bullock and Tatum develop enough affable chemistry to land a majority – at least 51 percent – of the jokes, as Pitt exits early lest he upstage them and Radcliffe gleefully oozes the snail-snot mucus of a sniveling child of extreme primogeniture. Directors Aaron Nee and Adam Nee maintain a lickety-split pace for about an act-and-a-half before it loses some momentum and settles into its vaguely almost sort-of convincing love story, leading us to the conclusion that our romantico-comedic leads are a lot more fun when they’re taking potshots at each other – you know, Tatum delivering dumb-guy malapropisms as Bullock rolls her eyes and groans. This is the type of movie that, in a different era, would advertise itself as containing ACTION! COMEDY! and ROMANCE! in splashy animated blurbs, and would deliver exactly that and nothing more and not apologize for any of it.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Genial timewaster!

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.