The Lost City * * ½

Ordinarily I'm not sure that I would choose to go and see a film like this, but I happened to catch the trailer and it looked like a real hoot. Regrettably what the trailer showed was scenes that suggested a different experience, because overall the film is flat, formulaic wearisome product.

Chan and Sandy looking sorry. 
So they should!

Further to "the best bits", there is a ten minute cameo from Brad Pitt.  He absolutely steals the show, not just because he is Brad, but also because his character typifies what the whole film should have been. I feel for the otherwise capable actors whose roles give them little chance to similarly shine.  Though I will concede Sandra Bullock makes a fair fist of it against the odds.

It's a romantic comedy.  She is a writer of romantic adventure novels which feature ancient texts and symbols and other nonsense, and an Indiana Jones type main man.  A bit like a female Dan Brown, except even dumber.

Alan (Channing Tatum) is nothing more than a model who poses on the cover of her novels, pictorializing the main character, but as such he has become inextricably part of her franchise, and now he actually thinks he is as important as she is.  Indeed, he is beginning to think he is her main character.

In one novel she speaks of some long lost treasure.  A madman (Daniel Radcliff) with unlimited wealth believes the stuff she writes and arranges for her to be kidnapped and taken to an island until she coughs up the location of the treasure.  

So most of it is set on a jungle type island with her trying to escape with Alan and the pair of them razzing each other and squealing and taking risks and going quiet and talking about feelings and finding themselves humiliated by each other... You know the formula.  Watch the trailer, also see if you can catch the bit with Brad, forget the rest.