Film Review - The Lost City (2022)

 The Lost City stars Sandra Bullock as Loretta Sage an adventure romance novelist who is mourning the loss of her husband while also trying to complete her latest novel, one night after a book launch she is abducted by a wealthy young billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) to help find the lost Crown of Fire on an island about to erupt but her cover model Dash (Channing Tatum) plots a plan to go and rescue her.

 

The Lost City is good fun when it actually tries to be a straightforward adventure film, there’s the group of evil with lots of henchmen, leeches in rivers, erupting volcanoes, caves, secret paths and all of it worked pretty well for me and I had fun, Bullock is sometimes underrated as an actress mainly because she never really worked for me as a sweetheart rom com type but here as a tom boyish type she worked very well as did Radcliffe as the villain.

 

He is clearly having a great time in this role and he was the show stealer for me in this film and even reminded me a little bit of Tom Hiddleston with his voice (the 2 sound a little similar I feel) plus Brad Pitt has a very fun cameo.

 

But when this film tries to be a comedy it falls flat in the mud on the island and boy am I so so so utterly fucking sick of so many modern movies trying to be funny when they either aren’t or don’t FUCKING NEED TO BE!!!! Sorry to lose my lolly like that but it really pisses me off and I can’t help but think that this is a continuation of the Joss Whedon influence on so many modern writers and directors and look he could balance humour and drama pretty well but very few others can and now that Whedon’s career is now in disgrace can we please cut this shit out and start to play most things as a pretty straight bat it will improve many other films.

 

Also Channing Tatum just didn’t work for me as a loveable lunk, he’s too handsome and buff for this type of role and part of me wishes that someone else like Chris Pratt had played this role instead and also his chemistry with Bullock didn’t really click for me whereas you go back to Romancing the Stone which has heavily influenced this movie Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas worked very well as a pair while Danny Devito provided much of the comic relief and maybe that approach would’ve been better here as well.

 

And so that was the Lost City and it wants to be a new Romancing the Stone but it feels more like a new Jewel of the Nile for me but it has its moments, 2 and a half out of 5.