“Tatum’s hunky character’s puppy-like devotion to Bullock’s dismissive damsel in distress serves the pic quite well…”   

The Lost City, a romantic comedy adventure movie reuniting for the first time 1990s heartthrob Sandra Bullock with Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliff and Brad Pitt.  A romance adventure novelist (Bullock) finds herself plunged neck deep into escapades and hi-jinks when a billionaire has her kidnaped believing one of her novels holds the key to fabled treasure in a lost city.

Bullock is Bullish on Comedy could be the title of an editorial for The New York Times promoting Loretta’s new bestseller.  If only that would fly this decently big budget adventure comedy (romanticish?) film but it doesn’t, at least for me, because even before its premiere I was like wondering, haven’t I seen this movie before?

When it was time to write up the review, I had to do some homework dang it, Romancing the Stone came back roaring to life from the embers of my mind, a movie that was intense, dazzlingly funny and had sparks galore from the Michael Douglas and Katheen Turner onscreen chemistry. 

Not that I have seen it in movie theaters on first release, Romancing the Stone was at the DVD counter of the public library in the year 2010 and my large wall-size TV screen was no match for the big silver screen, neither was my spectraphonic duo Dolby audio system any match for a movie house 32 audio speaker system. 

Plus in 2010 the social and cultural pulse of the country was completely overhauled and fjords away from the 1980s so watching the movie could not in any way match what audiences enjoyed on its initial premiere.

In fact, even though in 1984 Romancing the Stone was scooping up audiences and admirers, some critics blasted it as derivative and a sham attempt to steal the thunder of Raiders of The Lost Ark and the chemistry of teaming-up Harrison Ford with Karen Allen.

So Paramount Pictures retools Romancing as a middle-aged writer of Harlequin-style romance novels, who may have accidentally created a fictional Rosetta stone to a lost fabulous city in the antiquity of the Americas and a stop-at-nothing kinda of Elon Musk billionaire kidnaps the author in a misguided zeal to be an immortal pioneer of archeology, believing Loretta (Bullock) to hold the key to decrypting the location of this lost city.

Enter Alan (Tatum), a male model used by Loretta’s publisher who is a secret admirer of Loretta and will do anything in his powers to rescue our damsel in distress, except he is no Jason Bourne and no Ethan Hunt. 

Alan is more like your yoga practicing fitness trainer at the local gym, who would be the first in line at qualifying for the roadkill of the year award when up against our evil doers.

Both Bullock and Tatum are good enough actors for the script, having done numerous hits and miss movies before embarking on The Lost City. 

The production is on solid ground in terms of location cinematography, stunts and pyrotechnics and in editorial skills.  The pacing is breezy, and the scenes introducing us to the characters are more than adequate.

And there were plenty of potholes for this production to fall into and a few flaws to point out, later on in our extended review.

With The Lost City, the cast is well rounded, except perhaps for Beth (DeVine Joy Randolph) who seemed a bit of a push in terms of her role as a publicist, she wasn’t a good enough fit to be able to draw humor from the character and seemed to be fan service from a different kind of comedy – which the writers or the producers insisted on quilting her with the scenery.

Wouldn’t you know it?  Some of the best humor scenes involve Brad Pitt as Jack Trainer in an extended cameo sequence, bringing up memories of his film turn as lethal assassin/mercenary Brad Bond in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005). 

There are quite a few more notes and comments about The Lost City but they are stashed away in the Gold/Silver Members edition of this review.

“Even gifts as prodigious as Bullock’s and Tatum’s can’t keep The Lost City afloat”