Review: Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum go enjoyably neo-screwball in ‘The Lost City’

Halfway by way of the tomb-raiding, car-crashing, butt-baring shenanigans of “The Misplaced Metropolis,” Channing Tatum pauses to remind Sandra Bullock to not decide a e-book by its cowl. It’s an apt cliché: She performs Loretta Sage, the writer of a collection of fashionable romance novels; he’s Alan, the stud whose ripped chest and Fabio wig have helped promote her paperbacks to hundreds of thousands of joyful readers. To Loretta, Alan is an incompetent himbo with delusions of grandeur and definitely the final idiot she’d need to be caught with on a wild and loopy jungle journey. However like loads of Tatum characters (see the “Magic Mike” and “21 Leap Road” motion pictures — critically), he seems to be smarter, deeper and extra genuinely heroic than she expects.

So positive, don’t decide a e-book by its cowl. I ought to notice, nevertheless, that I’ll have dedicated an equal offense after I opted to take a look at “The Misplaced Metropolis”: The poster made it look type of enjoyable, and lo and behold, it’s. It helps that the pairing of Bullock and Tatum — now that feels like a regulation agency I’d rent, or a minimum of a hoity-toity restaurant I’d eat at — is as pleasant as you’d count on from two actors of such goofy attraction and flamable vitality. It additionally helps that the administrators, Aaron and Adam Nee (“Band of Robbers”), have tailor-made this unapologetically spinoff car to their stars’ easygoing chemistry, taking what might need been a strained, clanging excuse for a mainstream action-comedy and investing it with, if not massive stomach laughs, then a minimum of a refreshing sweetness of spirit.

This may occasionally sound like an odd factor to say a few film by which the male lead will get spattered with human viscera and attacked by blood-sucking leeches (although not, fortunately, in the identical scene). However I’m getting forward of the plot, which is a nice mixture of the acquainted, the preposterous and the familiarly preposterous.

Together with their co-writers, Oren Uziel and Dana Fox, the brothers Nee have rearranged the sturdy bones of “Romancing the Stone,” Robert Zemeckis’ 1984 journey starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. As soon as once more a pulp novelist finds herself misplaced in a distant jungle due to some treasure-hungry ne’er-do-wells, and as soon as once more a not-entirely-trustworthy man involves her ostensible rescue. This variation on the formulation has fewer crocodiles and extra explosions; it additionally has a bonus prolonged cameo by Brad Pitt, briefly and amusingly sending up his personal man’s-guy nonchalance.

The 2 lead roles have additionally been deftly custom-made, each to mirror a extra Twenty first-century gender dynamic and to accommodate the yin-yang mixture of Bullock’s smarts and Tatum’s sensitivity. Loretta could also be a well-liked author, however she additionally despises her work and most of her readers; she’s a serious-minded archaeologist by commerce (so, sniff, was her late husband) with a specialty in useless languages. This (kind of) explains why she’s abruptly kidnapped, mid-book tour, by Alistair Fairfax (an excellent Daniel Radcliffe), a rich media baron with a Murdoch-scion advanced who flies her to his closely guarded compound on a distant island, the place she and she or he alone can find the whereabouts of some storied El Dorado.

And so at the same time as she has to traipse by way of the jungle in an impractical sequined jumpsuit as purple as her prose, Loretta is hardly a damsel in misery. And Bullock, having already bested an exploding bus in “Velocity,” a failing spacecraft in “Gravity” and a suicidal epidemic in “Chook Field,” regards this out-of-nowhere abduction as if it have been merely an ill-timed vacation. Loretta is healthier ready to outlive a lethal tropical journey than, say, Alan, who nonetheless touchingly chases after her, decided to stay as much as the chivalry and heroism of his fictional alter ego.

And after a bumbling, grumbling style, he does. Alan isn’t a lot of a fighter, as we see in a couple of amusingly staged early motion scenes, however his abiding sweetness progressively disarms Loretta, as does his behavior of shedding clothes every time narratively essential (which is cheekily usually). It additionally nudges “The Misplaced Metropolis” right into a extra pleasurably laid-back groove than you would possibly count on. You wouldn’t name this film understated, precisely: There are automobiles to crash, historical treasures to uncover and unhealthy males to incinerate, however Bullock and Tatum by no means appear in any explicit hurry to get all of it completed.

They make an effortlessly watchable duo, whether or not they’re squeezing right into a hammock or negotiating the gently bickersome neo-screwball rhythms of the dialogue. The opposite actors choose up properly on their vibes, together with Oscar Nuñez as a pleasant man with a goat and a terrific Da’Vine Pleasure Randolph as Loretta’s tirelessly loyal e-book agent, who is aware of all too properly the worth of romantic fantasies as shrewdly calculated as this one.