The Lost City – A Flawed But Entertaining Adventure Comedy

The Lost City is very confident in what it wants to be as a film. It strives to be a fun, adventure and romantic comedy with a charming cast and nothing more. It is a wildly entertaining watch that never took itself too seriously. The story sees Channing Tatum play Alan, a book model for Sandra Bullock’s author character, Loretta. From there, they found themselves wrapped up in an adventure through the jungle, in search of a lost city, whilst at the same time, running from Daniel Radcliffe’s Fairfax, who’s attempting to locate the exact same location. In the end, this is the kind of film that was never meant to be taken seriously, rather as one that is made to entertain the audience through its charismatic characters and the humorous situations that they kept getting themselves into and for that, it succeeded more often than not.

The characters of The Lost City are charming, aided mostly by its cast for whom the comedic material appears to be right in their wheelhouse, Tatum and Bullock especially. The way they played off of each other led to some surprisingly heartfelt moments as well as comedic moments. Both Tatum and Bullock play off Brad Pitt, who makes the most out of a brief appearance as Jack Trainer, adding to their dynamic nicely. Meanwhile, Radcliffe plays Fairfax as a crazy mad-man, perhaps a little too much so. Normally the right levels of comedic madness, he occasionally did get over-the-top, potentially taking audiences out of the film and straight into the abnormal madness of his character.

As a film, The Lost City does take some time to get going as the moments before the characters hit the jungle are probably some of its weakest and the film would have been better served with less of those scenes. With those scenes out of the way, a wild and comedic journey of a model searching for the author of the books of whom he models for began. Going from action to pure buddy comedy and everything in between, the film merely throws the kitchen sink at audiences in its attempt to be a spectacle of entertainment and nothing more, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that approach.

Despite it being a wildly entertaining and enjoyable ride, the film was still ultimately held back by a slightly messy and awkward script. Aside from its deep moments and humorous scenes, the script also featured some awkward lines and specific plot points that were brought up before never being mentioned again. As a whole, a lot of the plot really didn’t really make sense while one side-plot in particular was completely unnecessary. As mentioned, the film doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel in terms of the genre by any means as audiences who are not fans of formulaic romantic comedies may find themselves yawning. Also, anyone who has seen any romantic comedy will not be surprised in predicting the plots and beats of each moment right away. However, the heart of the film lies in its charismatic cast who have fairly good chemistry that carry its goofy and comedic moments.

At the end of the day, despite its screenplay issues, The Lost City is highly entertaining more than anything else, and sometimes that’s enough.

still courtesy of Paramount Pictures

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Jasmine Graham