The Lost City is a featherweight comedy that resists larger meaning. But it speaks to our cultural moment, wherein the present and future look so awful that we can only find pleasure by turning to the past.
Following the return of the gross-out comedy (Jackass Forever), slasher movie (X and the latest Scream) and erotic thriller (Deep Water) to American screens this year, The Lost City looks back fondly on the Indiana Jones series and the ’80s films it inspired. More bluntly, it’s an unofficial remake of Romancing the Stone, copying that film’s narrative about a romance novelist who finds herself in a real-life adventure. It doesn’t have an edgy or daring bone in its body. Even its decision to objectify model Alan (Channing Tatum) rather than writer Loretta (Sandra Bullock) feels safely au courant, especially given the likely target audience.
Raiders of the Lost Ark was meant as an homage to ’30s serials, but it gave new life to the action movie. Like recent neo-slasher movies, The Lost City gets its DNA from a lineage that’s already generations deep into recycling. But it goes back even further — the chemistry and banter between Tatum and Bullock harkens back to screwball comedies. It uses these references as fuel for comfort food. The formulaic nature of The Lost City is part of its charm, until it starts to feel like a serious limitation.
Loretta sits in front of her laptop, churning out tales of adventure and love she has not personally experienced. Her work is stuck on a treadmill, as she grinds out an endless series of romance novels featuring the hunky Alan on their covers. To her audience, Alan is an icon. When they appear in public together, several people urge him to take his shirt off. (Or else urge her to rip it off.) But she’s kidnapped by Abigail (Daniel Radcliffe), a billionaire impressed by the translation of an ancient language in her novel. He drags her to an imaginary Spanish-speaking island in the Atlantic to find its treasure, the Crown of Fire. Alan takes off in pursuit of her, hiring macho meditation guru Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt).
Tatum first showed his comic skills opposite Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street, and he seems to have a great sense of humor about the fact that he looks like a walking G.I. Joe doll — his jarhead haircut in The Lost City only accentuates the resemblance. The film has an air of wholesome horniness, full of tame double entendres. (I’ll give you three guesses what one of Loretta’s fans takes her novel’s name The Lost City of D as a reference to; the first two don’t count.) Tatum strips down for a scene in which Loretta peels leeches off his ass while he freaks out about them sucking away his essence. But if the scene’s subtext hints at anxiety about who might be watching his nude body, the film cheerfully shows Loretta’s reaction to seeing his full monty.
In other respects, The Lost City feels retro. People of color are relegated to side characters (including the obligatory Black friend who is devoted to Loretta) as the white characters run all over a Latin American island. But the script suffers from lack of development when Loretta and Alan aren’t bonding. It also misuses its cast — Pitt gets a glorified cameo, while Radcliffe’s performance hints at a dandyish eccentricity the film never plays out.
In fact, Abigail’s quest is a MacGuffin for the love story between Alan and Loretta. If you’ve ever read a plot description of a rom-com, you can figure out where this is headed long before the characters do. The film coasts on an easy charm, and even at its weakest, it’s a pleasant distraction.
But the sense that we’re living through a story that only feels at all fresh because comedies have been banished from mainstream American cinema keeps coming back. It could have been assembled by an algorithm determined to re-create the experience of spending a lazy Sunday afternoon watching a movie for the fourth time on cable.
