The Lost City ( 2022 )

With every movie that my mom shows me I never fail to have a deep and soul crushing moment where I realize the people I love might just have horrendous taste in movies. Am I used to it? Yes, unfortunately. But that doesn’t make it any easier when she gives me titles like The Lost City. 

Truthfully, I think she was trying to make me watch something even more boring and about zombie pirates right before this. So I bit the bullet and picked what I assumed would be the lesser of two evils. 

A questionable romcom.

Spoiler: it still sucked… ( actually it made me laugh a lot but I can’t let her win every battle ).

The movie starts off strong with Loretta, a miserable romance novelist who recently had become a recluse post her husband dying. But looking at her you’d never assume that because she is the most put together person in the entire movie. She’s finally been dragged out of her mourning cave kicking and screaming to promote her latest book wearing an outfit that is some how the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen yet I know it cost more than my rent.

We’re then shoved right into the loving arms of Alan— you classic himbo model with the self-awareness of a golden retriever who is the “muse” (read: the man on the cover of her romance novels). His only job being: to look pretty and have the emotional range of a rotisserie chicken. Naturally, everyone eats that up.

Of course not Loretta because what kind of romcom would this be without the chase! We all need the drama.

I should make an extra note here that her book tour is about a…intimate romance novel— that also happens to include some sort of tomb raiding? Her late husband was an archaeologist and they wanted to discover things together, that was some plot point. It’s basically The Mummy but worse.

And as Loretta manages to make a fool of herself on stage and basically ruin her book tour she flees— just to get kidnapped by some weird billionaire named Abigail Fairfax, who is somehow both tiny and terrifying. His whole punch line was having a girls name but the joke fell terribly flat but for my journalistic integrity, here I am mentioning it.

Fairfax believes that Loretta’s new book holds the key to finding a lost treasure (because of course it does) and that she’s the only person who can translate this nearly dead language and help him succeed in finding it. 

Here’s where it all comes to a screeching halt for me. Abigail Fairfax? He’s Daniel Radcliffe. And I am so so sorry to this poor actor but that’s Harry Potter to me. I don’t care of many movies he does where he plays the accordion, guns get stapled into his hands, or he kidnaps romance authors for sport— still Harry. And watching Harry Potter go full on James Bond villain was almost sacrilegious to me. Maybe if it was a wand I would have felt better.

Anyways, Alan decides he’s the hero of this very weird story and decides he’s going to save Loretta. Mind you, his qualifications for a rescue mission are in bold “looks good with no shirt on”. You know what? Sure why not. That’s comedy enough.

He happens to know a guy named Jack Trainer, an actual ex-navy seal who would immediately go to make this movie into an action movie. Jack’s entrance is so competent and cool that it whiplashes you into thinking “Hey! This could be more than silly goofy romance!” And sure, they had to stick to their jokes of putting him in the worlds tiniest car or making him a crypto bro… but a small price to pay for some brute force action.

And well! That’s shot (literally) about 20 minutes into his character reveal. He ends up saving Loretta and in a moment of romance the two share… sniped. Like brains on the screen type sniped. 

I hate to say it— I was a little relieved. Brad Pitt being too cool could have killed the charm and stupidity this movie was marinating me in for the entire first half.

We didn’t need a real action hero— we needed a shirtless equally brainless man and a tired writer in a sparkly one piece barely surviving the elements in the jungle.

From here, it’s really everything you’d expect: Loretta and Alan fumble around the jungle and get tied up in “wacky” situations. There’s leeches. There’s mud. There’s a forced strip-tease scene to make sure they got the most out of using Channing Tatum as a main actor. 

Somewhere in the middle of their constant misadventures and off putting flirting, you realize that this movie isn’t really about treasure hunting or Loretta finding that life is worth living. It’s about too very pretty people with some of the worst on screen chemistry trying to prove that you can pay anyone to kiss on screen.

During all this misadventure theres a subplot involving Loretta’s publicist, who’s been frantically trying to find her missing author while delivering some of the only funny lines in the entire movie. I really wish it was just her being exasperated the entire 112 minutes instead. It might have been a more memorable watch.

Loretta and Alan while trying to escape the massive amounts of James Bond buffoonery, find a safe town, and right when you think you’re free— bam, there he is again. Harry Potter. Just to kidnapped Loretta once more! They really haven’t found any other way to do criminal activity and Harry Potter is a man on a mission to find his treasure.

Truthfully, all this scene summed up to be is a budget spender on a cool army tank and a lot of fire. Nothing happens that’s that exciting but to push the plot to where the treasure is hidden.

And eventually they actually find it! And you’ll never guess what the treasure was. Gold? No. Jewels? Also no. But a symbol of eternal love or something equally cheesy. We all take a moment to “awww” at the sweet symbolism of the movie.

Not Harry though. 

He loses his mind in a lot of rage that can only be described as losing your first monopoly game when you’re a kid. In a last ditch effort and to add to his rolling kill count of about… three. He locks up Loretta and Alan and scurries away to safety as the cgi volcano in the tomb begins to erupt.

But alas, love will always find a way. One of his henchmen who was equally touched by romance and tired of Harry Potter’s shit left them a tool to get out so they could escape from being they next lost treasure the movie could have made a sequel on.

It ends as you’d expect it to. Bad guy gets caught, lover’s nearly die but manage to make it out okay, the publicist gets her moment to shine. 

All packed up with a nice bow on top.

My mom, my dear sweet mother, love it. She got a riot out of the film. She sat and laughed at the end thinking she had proved a point to me that it was a good movie. It was still probably better than whatever the first movie she put on was.

So, here we are again. Another movie wrapped up and you’re dying to hear my thoughts. 

If you happened to have shoved Indiana Jones and ever Nicholas Sparks novel into a blender but conveniently forgot to put the blade in as you mash the mix button. You’d get The Lost City.

And yet, I’ll admit — through gritted teeth — that I laughed too. Watching Brad Pitt get unceremoniously annihilated and Daniel “Not Harry Potter” Radcliffe carry the entire movie on his back, one rich-kid hissy fit at a time, was stupid. Deeply stupid. But sometimes, stupid can be fun.

It’s not the worst movie ever made— it’s just incredibly mid. It’s the cinematic equivalent to eating plain toast for dinner. 

2.5 stars for Brad Pitt’s deviously quick exit and Daniel Radcliffe’s villain meltdown, and the sheer commitment to the bit of being as unserious as possibly. The other’s were also there but not nearly as memorable for taking up the entire movie.

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