Review: The Lost City

When I heard of the reason Sandra Bullock was starring and producing this film, I was hopeful despite the trailer not appealing to me at all.

I'm always up for someone trying to recreate those mid budget adventure comedies from the 1980's like Romancing The Stone or Crocodile Dundee. So despite the marketing not looking that promising, the decent amount of buzz coming from America willed enough of myself to give this is a chance.

The set-up gave me a surprising amount of 'Nim's Island' vibes due to the personality of Bullock's character had. It was virtually identical to Jodie Foster's in that surprisingly fun family adventure.

For a lot of the viewing, I did feel I had been transported back to those films this one is paying homage to and I was back in the late 80's. That gave it a nice amount of refreshing value.

Despite all that, I still wasn't quite getting a complete package.

You can tell Bullock put a lot into this film both on and off the screen, which I do appreciate a lot. She put a solid leading performance and continues to show off her comedy to a satisfactory level. 

Channing Tatum was perfectly fine in his role. His comedic skills are still being well utilised in this and has solid and believable chemistry with Bullock throughout.

While it was nice seeing Daniel Radcliffe as the villain, I never felt his characters threat. Some aspects to his character worked. But it was hard for me to see him as the main antagonist in this story. I'm still up for more Radcliffe in roles that are out of his comfort zone though.

The big stand-out despite the little screen time they had was Brad Pitt. His powerful screen presence really helped this film give it the energy it needed and he just elevated every aspect of the film. From the moment he was introduced, it was like a ray of sunshine just entered the room.

Oscar Nunez gave a surprising amount of effective comic relief in his character, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph was a solid addition to the cast as well.

The overall look of the film was very pleasing. There were some nice use of exotic locations. That for me gave some practical weight to a lot of the action sequences. The addition of visual effects was fairly well used and never felt over digitalised or out of place.

Most of the issues I had with the film were that almost all of its aspects were never at an exceptional. You pretty much know how its going it to play out and there's very little if anything that makes this stand out above films within its genre. One reason I think it was just going through the motions, was the pacing. It's not quite as adrenaline fuelled for what is needed for a story like this. So that's probably why I and feel others will see this as rather pedestrian.

I could have gone harder with its weaknesses. But with the film being intended to be a bit of light fun, it would be harsh for me to feel that it wasn't worth my time.

It was ok overall. It was nice to see this type of film be in the cinemas again. The story is perfectly fine, the cast do a good job of giving it enough life to make it entertaining enough.

While not all of the comedy worked, there was a decent amount of laughs to make this worth it thanks to the witty dialogue.

I hope this isn't just a one-off and we get more of these mid-budget adventure/rom-com releases from major studios.

Rating: 6/10