When did Hollywood decide that all globe-trotting adventures have to be extremely stupid?
In the 1980s, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Romancing the Stone” weren’t chicken soup for the moron’s soul. Neither was the much more recent “National Treasure,” starring Nicolas Cage.
However, the dumb new movie “The Lost City” joins “Uncharted,” “Jungle Cruise” and “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” in the discouraging trend of demeaning a once-great genre with nauseating humor, no thrills or grandeur and an over-reliance on star power.
Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence and some bloody images, suggestive material, partial nudity and language.) In theaters.
The wasted celeb here is Sandra Bullock, who plays a widowed romance novelist not unlike her abrasive, pseudo-feminist character from “Miss Congeniality.” Named Loretta Sage, she doesn’t concern herself with men anymore, wants to stay out of the spotlight and would rather be drinking chardonnay in the tub.
Too bad then that she’s forced to tour with her dim-witted Fabio-like cover model Alan (Channing Tatum) who rips off his shirt onstage to delight the ladies.
After one book tour talk, she’s kidnapped by billionaire Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) and the movie goes loopy. The smarmy gent realizes that her books’ setting, the tropical Lost City of D, is real and holds a hidden treasure. He needs her — and chloroform — to help him find the loot.
Directors Aaron and Adam Nee’s movie sits frustratingly for two hours on the tarmac of comedy as we the angry passengers await takeoff. Precious few jokes land, and the accidental safari scenes, with Bullock peeling leeches off Tatum’s butt or briefly running through the trees with a cameo-ing Brad Pitt, are annoying and obvious.
The funniest people in the film have nothing to do with Loretta and Alan’s island antics. Da’Vine Joy Randolph plays Beth, an exhausted, can’t-take-it-anymore literary agent, and Patti Harrison is the aging social media intern Allison. Their modern sense of humor goes down way easier than Bullock and Tatum rereading 1998’s miserable “Six Days Seven Nights” with whiny Anne Heche and Harrison Ford.
Tatum, who’s most charming when it seems like he’s improvising, has the duo’s best line when he calls pro-women Loretta “Gloria Seinfeld.”
Bullock begins as petulant and then turns emotional, a familiar character arc that she knows as well as her Social Security number.
But it’s Radcliffe’s part that exemplifies the many weaknesses of “Lost City.” At no fault of the actor’s, his Abigail isn’t realistically evil enough or outlandish enough (a la Will Ferrell’s Mugatu in “Zoolander”) to latch onto — just as the film itself uncomfortably blends action and comedy into beige mush.
As skeptical as I am about a 79-year-old Harrison Ford returning as Indiana Jones, he might be this limping genre’s last hope.
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