The Lost City (2022)

User Review

• 

  d_riptide

  5 / 10

  For some reason, despite the fact that I had a good feeling on what The Lost City was guaranteed to be, I went into it with no expectations and…..the end result was equal parts fun and mundane: fundane, essentially.
  
  A big part of that would have to be, of course, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum playing mostly to their strengths and bouncing off each other surprisingly well, further benefited by both of their characters actually having solid emotional arcs with a decent enough payoff. Brad Pitt’s cameo was nothing if not stellar and Daniel Radcliffe had a blast as the ‘crowbarred villain because we have to have one’ role; their characters ultimately don’t amount to much.
  
  
  This film reminded me a lot of the Dora The Explorer movie in the sense that it’s gleefully exuberant in how self-aware, outlandish and semi-over the top is is, but as a silly formulaic movie intended to be just that, you could do much worse. Aaron and Adam Nee’s directing finds some footing once we get out to the wilderness but that’s not to say it finds a delicate balance with what they had to take up here; they don’t really expand beyond the setup of what the film wants to be. The time on the island combines the rather saggy adventure sequences with the slow-build of the dull romantic bond to keep the pacing brisk and ever-flowing but everything else tends to drag on when it’s not focused on the leads, dialogue is mostly uninspired alongside the rest of the script, production design is gorgeous to look at but ultimately is a glorified backdrop and even this movie can’t get away from ramble comedy, where improv starts to take over even when the joke is dead. Not every comedic moment has that problem; one or two one-liners got a chuckle out of me but considering every comedy film I see has something resembling that nowadays, it’s already gotten rather tiresome. And the extended use of ADR only makes it worse.
  
  Decent cinematography aside, the editing flip flops between sturdy and subpar and the music can best be described as interesting.
  
  
  
  For all the good the acting and chemistry did, it’s just another one of those scenarios where everything else surrounding the good practically trumps the quality of the product at hand but even though I expected the adventure and romantic angles to get mired in predictability anyway, I didn’t care. Disposable entertainment meant simply just to pass the time and….I didn’t mind.

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