The Lost City is funny, but he could have dared more

The Lost City is funny

The ingredients of The Lost City? Take Sandra Bullock, give her a character halfway between melancholy and self-irony, put on her side a wild Channing Tatum that parodies the modern social tronist, add the late Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe and finally a Brad Pitt at full speed as we would like to see semper

The final result is perhaps not what the first half presaged, however it is a perfect film to find lightness, fun and also to relax in a cinema hall, thanks to a visual dimension that is not excessively aggressive or adrenaline-pumping .

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum star in Paramount Pictures' "THE LOST CITY." Photo Credit: Kimberley French A strange couple from a romance novel The protagonist is the successful writer Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock), who for years with a saga halfway between Indiana Jones and the Harmony novels, has known a global success, which however is not enough to alleviate the pain of the loss of her husband, a famous archaeologist.

The event left her shaken, wounded and increasingly closed in on herself, so much so that she became in effect a sort of hikikomori, incapable of move on not only with their own life, but also with the latest novel in the series, to the desperation of his agent Beth (Da'Vine Jay Randolph).

To complicate matters further, there is the the fact that the protagonist of his novels is the heroic adventurer Dash, whose face on the cover is that of the narcissistic and boorish super-model Alan (Channing Tatum).

The two can't stand each other and have visions by now at the opposites of their success: an unbearable burden for Loretta, a dream c he doesn't have to stop for Alan.

However during the presentation of her latest and hated book, the shy and shy writer is kidnapped by the rich and unstable Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), who is convinced that she is the key to deciphering a map that will bring him to get his hands on the mythical treasure of the legendary Lost City.

Alan in spite of his awkwardness and shyness, will go after Loretta, along with the eccentric guide and ex military Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt), but nothing can prepare him for the series of misadventures and upheavals that the rescue operation will have on him, as on Loretta, including ambushes in the jungle, chases and an unlikely treasure hunt.

The Lost City is directed by Aaron Nee and Adam Nee, written by the latter with Dana Fox and Oren Uziel. It is really difficult at the moment to be able to predict how and how much it will be appreciated by the general public, given that it is in effect above all a gigantic mockery at adventure cinema, the one that made Indiana Jones immortal, and recently brought back into vogue by Jungle Cruise. br>
The end result is certainly honest and fun, but it only succeeds up to a certain point in its mission to break away from the obvious, to ridicule the cinematic clichés of yesterday and today.

Sandra Bullock and Daniel Radcliffe star in Paramount Pictures' "THE LOST CITY." Photo Credit: Kimberley French An irresistible and self-deprecating Sandra Bullock Sandra Bullock confirms that she is a particularly adaptable interpreter, capable of substantially juggling any genre, always with high-level results. Her comedy has always been something perfect and here she is left free to express herself to the best of her, through her classic she work in subtraction. Her Loretta is a really interesting character because basically the antithesis of everything that cinema and modern television series have tried to offer us: aggressive women, sure of themselves, of their lives and their bodies, who are self-sufficient. and for whom love is often something accessory and superfluous.

She instead carries her irresistible pout throughout the 92 minutes of this comedy that winks as well as the Steven Spielberg saga, also to La Mummia and to the G.I. Joe by Stephen Sommers, to the new Jumanj i and to Nicolas Cage's Ben Gates.

Vain, insecure, self-isolating from others like most of the contemporary cultural elites, unable to measure themselves against a society that they see as superficial and barbaric , undergoes an evolution perhaps too sudden in the second half of the film, also by virtue of a little guessed melò turning point.

The villain, played by a Daniel Radcliffe, partially compensates for the drop in energy and rhythm. what good or bad it makes a verse to the many tycoons in search of glory and fortune who among books, TV series and films of the cinema of the past, have become a metaphor of the ambition that leads to ruin, of the greed that blinds all reason.

All this, however, without forgetting to make him a ridiculous, weird individual, a sort of parody of modern gurus, those who speak about themselves in the third person and measure success in life on the basis of purely material objectives. He hasn't managed to stop being Harry Potter our Radcliffe yet, but going on like this maybe one day he'll make it.

The funny snapshot of the contemporary male crisis The other half of the couple is made up of a Channing Very nice Tatum, sculpted and shaved physique, spoiled and unable not to overestimate himself, which confirms the extraordinary irreverent verve of an actor, who is certainly among the most underestimated of his generation. Bad choices like Magic Mike and G.I. Joe at the time basically forced him into the role of the handsome one of a season.

In The Lost City his chemistry with Sandra Bullock is fantastic, with at least two, three well-known gags, where he becomes in all respects a totem of the identity crisis of the contemporary male. His Alan is all aesthetic and not very contained, terrified of skin rashes and insects, in need of being the center of attention, but also in possession of qualities that he himself ignores.

The pearl you do not expect, complementary to the character of Tatum, is Brad Pit t. Long hair as not seen at Vento di Passioni, in dazzling shape, together with Tatum he enjoys destroying the figure of the macho hero as the pop culture in the 80s created in profusion. He must have had a lot of fun playing his character, and on more than one occasion it is as blatant as it is irresistible.

Too bad that at some point The Lost City forgets the reason for the which exists: to make the viewer laugh, even about the hypersensitivity of modern society, with a rhythm that is up to half perfect, which makes the pumped Red Notice seem what it was: a bad film.

But suddenly the handbrake, no more gags or almost, with the search at all costs for sensitivity, seriousness and an evolution of the two unlikely protagonists that goes the wrong way.

Basically we liked them as well as they were: imperfect, ridiculous and vulnerable. Instead we see narrative digressions in favor of Randolph's unsuccessful Beth, with a drop in action quality and an ending that trudges conspicuously. Too bad, because she could take home more than enough. But the hope is that perhaps with a second film, there will be a more stable step and greater narrative cohesion. In the monotony of current entertainment products, between continuous-stream cinecomics and the Toretto family that never stops even in the face of ridicule, films like The Lost City are water in the desert.