The Lost City, the enjoyably silly jungle adventure comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, which knocked The Batman off the number one North American box office spot at the weekend, and had its London premiere in the actual snow last night, is, of course, an extended meet-cute. But there's a meet-cute-within-the-meet-cute that has the potential to be even more sizzling than the main one and, let's just say, we're here for it.
Bullock – who, can we all just agree, is a good thing – plays Loretta Sage, a writer of schlocky romance novels who has lost the love for her profession (and of her archaeologist husband, who’s dead), and finds herself doing cheesy book tours with her himbo cover model, Alan, played by Tatum. She thinks he’s a simpleton, he’s not so good at thinking in general. Then she gets kidnapped by one Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), a disgruntled scion who could be Roman Roy’s weird English cousin, and taken to a jungle island in the hope that she can decipher a mysterious piece of parchment that indicates the whereabouts of a piece of treasure that Abigail, for lack of anything else to do, is keen to get his hands on. For one reason or another, Alan finds himself on a mission to save Loretta. There’s only one way it’s going to go.
But before it goeth there, there’s an extended cameo from Brad Pitt, who disrupts the progression of the romance by making his Apollonian presence felt. Pitt plays Jack Trainer, an ex-military survival guru who’s also a dab-hand at meditation and looking hot. Interestingly though, it is Tatum’s Alan, not Bullock’s Loretta, who finds his head temporarily turned. Alan calls Jack to assist him in tracking Loretta (Jack’s masterful suggestion is to simply look up the GPS location of her smart watch), and it turns out to be Jack, with his long blonde tresses and borderline-problematic jeans, who first swings into the canvas tent in which Loretta is held captive. “Why are you so handsome?” she asks, more in confusion than lust – a question which the 58-year-old Pitt elicits from most of us (“My dad was a weatherman,” Jack replies).
Alan knows that he can’t compete with Jack – when Jack appears at the airport to collect Alan to begin their jungle escapade, he assesses Alan quickly, who's sporting pristine sweats and a neck cushion, before suggesting he might be better off waiting in the car – though maybe he can at least cling onto the hem of his flak-vest. In fact, Alan’s reaction to Jack is arguably more sexually charged and funny (Tatum, like Bullock, is a consistently likeable comic performer) than his inevitable romance with Loretta, in part because it’s not clear – to the audience or to Alan – if he wants to be Jack, to fuck Jack, to ask Jack to be his daddy, or a kinky combination of all three.
Of course The Lost City, directed and co-written by The Nee Brothers (who are soon to take on the new He-Man film) is a mainstream, don’t-scare-the-horses comedy adventure – one that probably gazes longingly at the majesty of Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in the way that Alan looks at Jack – so Alan’s fluttery feeling in his tummy (if not further down) is never going to be more fully explored. But, like the genuinely funny first half of this movie, before the plot kicks in and the jokes thin out, you can enjoy it while it lasts.
The Lost City is out in cinemas on 12 April
Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
