When The Lost City unassumingly racked up £160m at the global box office this spring, it proved a few things: the enduring appeal of the adult-targeted, star-driven romantic comedy, a genre that franchise-fixated studios have nonetheless sidelined of late; the near-supernatural ability of Sandra Bullock to conjure chemistry with just about any co-star you care to throw at her, in this case the resurgent Channing Tatum; and that laughs can still be wrung from the age-old premise of sticking two beautiful people in the wilderness and letting them fight their way out of it.
The far-flung great outdoors – be it Amazonian jungle or African plain – is among the most eternal antagonists in Hollywood cinema: it gives film-makers spectacle and actors obstacles, lending a sense of scale and heft to even the slightest stories. The romantic adventure film, meanwhile, has long been a Hollywood standby based on pretty outdated notions of gender crossover interest: women will come for the romance, studio execs reasoned, and men will tolerate that for the exotic action and derring-do. Whether or not that’s the case, it still works: The Lost City – just out on multiple VOD platforms – is a breezy, bouncy romp. Set predominantly on a remote Atlantic island, attractively played by the Dominican Republic, it’s complicated by all manner of conflicting treasure-hunt schemes that promptly leave your memory the second the credits roll. What sticks is the game, genuinely funny sparring between Bullock’s reserved romance novelist and Tatum’s likably inept himbo.
