Today’s film makers seem to be obsessed with either making superhero films
or depressing dramas with comedies almost forgotten about. Thankfully
someone’s still making something that’s going to make us laugh, it might
not be that original, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner have already
covered similar ground as a pair of bickering treasure hunters in Romancing
the Stone (1984) and its sequel Jewel of the Nile (1985), but it is a lot
of fun.
Sandra Bullock, dressed for most of the film in a purple tight glittering
jumpsuit, is Loretta Sage, a reclusive author who is on a book tour with
her handsome but not too bright cover model called Alan (Channing Tatum) or
Dash if you give him his character’s name in Sage’s book.
As she’s leaving a disastrous book signing event she’s kidnapped by
eccentric billionaire Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe hamming it up and
by the looks of it having the time of his life) who wants Sage to translate
an old map that he believes shows the location of a lost city where there
is meant to be hidden priceless jewels.
Why he just doesn’t pay her for her service is never really explained, but
then again I suppose we wouldn’t have a story. Refusing to help him Sage is
whisked away, in Fairfax’s private jet, to an island, in the middle of the
Atlantic, where he believes the lost city is located.
Thanks to her smart watch Alan, along with heroic action man Jack Trainer
(Brad Pitt), manage to track her whereabouts and head off on a rescue
mission which unsurprisingly ends up in a disaster with Sage and Alan
stranded in the middle of the jungle with Fairfax and his henchmen out to
kill both of them.
The humour in the Lost City isn’t subtle with one set piece, involving
leaches, small cars and wheelbarrows, after another being linked by no more
than the couple arguing with each other, there’s a lot of jokes about
Sage’s choice of clothing and footwear.
The Lost City is by no stretch of the imagine highbrow entertainment but it
is a couple of hours of enjoyable nonsense that’s a lot better than some of
the gloomy fair that we’ve been fed in cinemas over the last couple of
months.
