“The Lost City” is a stupid, stupid movie

Let’s be clear at the outset that “The Lost City” is a stupid, stupid movie. I would add a third “stupid”, but does it really merit it? Eh, why not? Add a third “stupid” in there, if it makes you feel better. 

It’s a “Romancing the Stone” wannabe knock-off. I mean that as literally as I can: it would like to be a knock-off of “Romancing the Stone”, but it genuinely feels like a remake or an off-brand version of a second rate version of the Michael Douglas film. Is it that bad? Did I say it was bad? No, I said it was stupid. A thing can be stupid and “not bad” to some degree. 

There was a basic degree of professionalism throughout. Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock comported themselves as best they could, saddled with an idiotic script. Daniel Radcliffe and Brad Pitt leaned into their parts with gusto and provided the only signs of life in one of the most turgid comedies I’ve seen in recent years. 

Okay, sounds pretty bad, right? Well, aside from the driver of the film being the protagonist’s unwillingness to assist a young billionaire on his search for the rarest, most fabled treasure in the world in a way that goes against all context (she and her deceased husband were archaeologists and you would think that she would jump on the chance to throw in with this guy; it would be the equivalent of having unlimited grant money), a pace that grounds to not just a screeching halt but totals the fucking car by slamming right into a ten-foot thick brick wall, and that central protagonist being painfully, uncomfortably, poorly written, how could I not call it a bad film?

Because aside from the ridiculous, utterly stupid lack of motivation to her reluctance to assist Radcliffe’s billionaire, and aside from the argh-argh-puke “romantic character development” moments between her and Alan (Channing Tatum), and so very many moments aping other, better movies, there were some genuinely amusing bits! 

As I mentioned above, Pitt who is only in the movie a short while walks off with every scene and Radcliffe does the same, particularly in his scenes with Bullock. And let me be fair; Bullock is actually a fine comic actor and Channing Tatum has proven his chops, too; but both are saddled with a script that so wants to be a classic screwball comedy but the writers really don’t seem to understand how that works. 

While Alan and Lauren (Bullock) are together and doing shtick, there’s the promise of a fleeter, funnier film and it is, frankly, dashed on the rocks through some of the worst “sincere” moments on-screen. We are very far from the Coen Brothers here, let alone Preston Sturges or Ben Hecht. Do they have chemistry? No, not really. But as two pros, they do what they can to provide some illusion of chemistry. And yeah, both are fine physical comics and I have to appreciate that. But it cannot save a movie mired in long, drawn-out beats to underscore how deep their feelings are for each other. 

At these moments, you beg for Radcliffe to show up as the petulant brother to a favored son who…and we never get the rest of the story. That was funny. While we are tasked with learning everything about our archaeologist-cum-romance writer, the running gag that Radcliffe is interrupted every time he starts telling his tale is actually pretty good.

Tatum plays the cover model for all of Lauren’s paperbacks, a Fabio type to end all Fabio types and he’s so good at playing dumb and hunky. Of course, there’s a human being underneath, sensitive, with feelings and the movie wants to show you how deep that river runs and undoes the character by doing so. For all that we get that Alan is attracted to Lauren (after all, he tagged along with Brad Pitt’s extraction expert to save her), so much of the script is more interested in telling rather than showing. Film is a visual medium; this film is a confused monkey. 

Had it trusted itself to go all out screwball, I could forgive its plot lapses that make no sense. Beginning with Lauren’s refusal to go along with Abigail Fairfax (I gave in and decided to look up Radcliffe’s character’s name) and superimposing distinctly Egyptian/Mesopotamian imagery onto what is really quite obviously a Caribbean island, and how Lauren as a character seems to vacillate between hard-nose bitchy to some, what? intellectually rigorous scholar to one of the most hackneyed written vulnerable types, I was almost able to overlook all that until I couldn’t. And I couldn’t because all of these sagging tropes showed up at the worst possible moments. 

The movie - I’m really trying to avoid calling it a film - starts out promisingly with Lauren bringing her string of novels to an end and on a publicity tour that goes south very publicly. Alan shows up as “Dash” the hero/cover model that women swoon over and up to the point where Fairfax makes off with Lauren, I thought we were on the way with a pretty snappy, even smart little flick. And boy oh boy, did I start hearing a sucking sound shorty thereafter. 

Fairfax presents what would be the project of a lifetime to Lauren who declines to help him (as already kvetched about, she never says why and Fairfax doesn’t ask?! If someone turned down my offer to explore and solve a major archeological puzzle and that person was a seasoned, storied expert in her field, I would want to know why) and so we are on his private jet where Lauren is conscripted to join Fairfax on the island. Later, she’s chained to a desk with a fragment of papyrus (not a thing that would survive in deep tropical climes) from which she is unable to glean much. 

This brings us to the next point where the script writers may not understand how human beings talk to each other and what reason or logic are. Lauren barely explains that the fragment is not enough to offer clues to whatever treasure it is that Fairfax is looking for, Fairfax never explains why he thinks that this piece of papyrus is the guide to that treasure, and we are now brought to realize how painfully stupid this movie is and how painfully stupid it’s going to get. 

In the meantime, Lauren’s agent Beth (the wonderful Da’Vine Jane Randolph; please do watch “Dolemite is My Name”) has contacted Pitt’s Jack Trainer, former mercenary turned extraction expert and again, all of this is playing out pretty perkily. The panel that Lauren takes part on prior to her kidnapping is moderated by Bowen Yang who, like Pitt and Radcliffe, just quietly takes the movie to places it should have gone. All of this is lost once we get to whatever the Dominican Republic is called here. 

It’s not the worst thing to have a supporting cast that is arguably carrying the film creaking under self-imposed weight to deliver a rom-com/adventure movie. Oscar Nunez shows up late in the proceedings and lends some wonderful, genuinely funny to perhaps make up for losing Pitt earlier? I dunno. I really don’t. 

Where did it all go wrong? The buck is supposed to stop with the directors and in this case, we have the Nees, Aaron and Adam, who also co-scripted.  I guess the biggest project they had worked on before was the feature adaptation of “Mortal Kombat”; but we need to ask about the script. 

The story comes from Seth Green, who wrote “The King of Kong: a Fistful of Quarters” a pretty good doc about gamers and arcade games and who also wrote the introduction and transitions between segments for “Freakonomics”, directed that film as well as “Horrible Bosses”, episodes of “The Office”, “Parks and Recreation”, and “Community.” Not a bad track record (he’s also produced a ton of stuff.) It becomes clear, however, that the script is a patchwork from competing sensibilities. The Nee brothers worked on it with Oren Uriel who wrote “Mortal Kombat” and “The Cloverfield Paradox” and we may assume that the comic beats and romance elements came courtesy of Dana Fox, whose record is spotty: “What Happens in Vegas”, “Couples Retreat”, and “How to Be Single” are not exactly classics of the genre, but all are amusing enough. She’s no Nancy Meyers is what I’m saying. But the diverse cooks in the kitchen kind of tell us how this film was written by committee and why it suffers from such weird pacing and motivation issues. Yeah, it’s a mess.

I know I sound like I didn’t like it, but I kind of do. It’s like the backyard theater project a couple of little kids would come up with: “and-and-then this’ll happen!” “Yeah! And then they can do this!” “And then they kiss!!!” “Ew! Gross, Dana! Get out of here!” “Not everyone’s into shit blowing up, Oren!” And so on.

But yeah, it’s not a great movie. 

It’s pretty stupid.