BEFORE: Originally this was going to be the slot for "The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday", with Rob Morgan carrying over from "The Unforgivable" - and then Da'Vine Joy Randolph would carry over to "The Lost City", but the plan has changes so that I can fit in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" tomorrow. Also, from December's plan I'll have to drop "A Shock to the System", a Michael Caine film airing on Tubi, because my count's been one film over for the year for months now. One film had to be jettisoned, and now TWO films have to go if I'm going to make room for tomorrow's film - but I've been very aware for a while which films I can drop without affecting the chain, in this case if I drop "The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday", the chain's just going to seal the breach around the hole, because now Sandra Bullock carries over from "The Unforgivable". This is why I design my plans like this - usually I know that I can drop the middle films in a three-film or four-film chain with the same actor, but this was a special case, that a film was bookended by two Sandra Bullock films. I'm back on course, heading for Christmas - heck, I was never OFF course, I'm just making one less stop, right?
THE PLOT: A reclusive romance novelist on a book tour with her cover model gets swept up in a kidnapping attempt that lands them both in a cutthroat jungle adventure.
AFTER: Obviously, tomorrow I'll be talking much more about parodies, but this film is also a parody of a sort, it pokes fun at the whole "adventure" genre, which now includes everything from the "Indiana Jones" and "Tomb Raider" franchises to the "Jumanji" sequels, and I guess "Romancing the Stone", "Jungle Cruise", "Tarzan", "Conan". Without getting too far into the sci-fi stuff like "Jurassic Park" and "King Kong" movies, what do we call the group of films that is specifically concerned with the archaeological and jungle stuff? IMDB's got a list of "archaeology-adventure" films, and that's probably the best I can hope for, but that also lumps in films like "National Treasure" and "The Da Vinci Code", and so I'm just not sure that we're all agreeing on where the cut-off might be. "Timeline"? "The Goonies"? The genre seems to be all over the place, or at least the list of films is.
On top of all that, this is an adventure film, but also a comedy, but also a romantic comedy. There sure seems an attempt to be all things to all people, or for a screenwriter to hedge their bets by touching all the bases. Probably some corporate strategist figured out that men like adventure films, women like romance and kids like slapstick comedy, so that motivated them to sort of Frankenstein all these elements together and create something for the whole family. Damn it, that shouldn't work, but I think somehow they got lucky here and put together a very watchable movie that also ticked all those boxes. Huh.
There are digs at authors, too, especially romance/adventure novelists, and the long blond wig that the cover model wears to play Dash McMahon when he poses for the art is probably a dig at Fabio, who appeared on all those many romance books a few decades ago. Yeah, it's probably better to poke fun at things when they're popular, and not thirty years later. If you weren't around during the 1990's, and I know some of you weren't born yet, I'm talking about Fabio Lanzoni, who posed for photos in 1987 that were used to create cover art for romance books, starting with "Hearts Aflame" by Johanna Lindsey. This led to a career as a male model, a few TV and movie roles, a notable commercial for "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter", and then one day he rode on a roller coaster at Busch Gardens in Williamburg, VA, and somehow a flock of geese was passing by the ride, and one bird got hit by Fabio's face, and I swear I am not making this up. Fabio is retired from modeling and show biz now, but he's got that typical American success story, where you can be famous for just about anything, provided you're the best or best-known in that area.
But the downside is that "The Lost City" is also a story that starts with writer's block, and if you've hung around The Movie Year for any length of time, you probably know how much I hate those. Loretta Sage not only has writer's block, but she's dealing with the death of her husband, so she's been a recluse for some time (as many of us were, during the pandemic). Finishing the latest "Dr. Angela Lovemore" book means that she'll have to leave the house, go out on a book tour, and to make matters worse, her agent has also booked the cover model for Dash, Alan Caprison, on the same tour. Alan has a secret crush on Loretta, while she can't stand how he acts when they're on stage together, always ripping his shirt off and such. As you can probably guess, these two are most likely going to end up together, because opposites attract, and hate is not the opposite of love, plus male lead and female lead thrown together, you do the math.
Loretta gets kidnapped by a weird billionaire, who believes that the information in her novels (based on research she did with her late husband, an archaeologist) will help him find a secret treasure on an island he just bought, and Alan witnesses the tail end of her kidnapping, and sets out to rescue her, with the help of a more accomplished action hero guy, a former Navy SEAL and CIA agent. This guy, Jack Trainer, is trained for combat and, unlike Alan, has the skills to rescue Loretta. Also, unlike, Alan, Loretta connects with him on a mental and personal level, and it looks for a short time like there's an interesting love triangle developing. But no, the story sees fit to remove Jack from the equation so that Alan and Loretta are basically stranded, and have to work together to survive and get back to civilization, if possible.
The two hold their own, but accidentally stumble upon some information that suggests there might really be a treasure, and they could possibly find it before the mad billionaire does, so they have to try. Well, at least there are some nice reversals in the plot, I'll give it that - every time you might think you know where this story is headed, they change it up and turn it around or upside-down, but narratively speaking, that's a good thing. Who wants to predict at the start where a film's story is going to end up, and be right about it, where's the fun in that? And this movie IS a lot of fun, I enjoyed it despite at first thinking it wasn't going to be that enjoyable.
Also starring Channing Tatum (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Daniel Radcliffe (last seen in "Lost in London"), Da'Vine Joy Randolph (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Brad Pitt (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Oscar Nuñez (last seen in "The Proposal"), Patti Harrison (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Bowen Yang (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Stephen Lang (last heard in "The Nut Job"), Joan Pringle (last seen in "Best Friends"), Hector Anibal (last seen in "xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Thomas Forbes-Johnson, Sli Lewis, Adam Nee, Raymond Lee, Anthony Alvarez (last seen in "Frida"), Marcy Jarreau (last seen in "The Last Word").
RATING: 6 out of 10 sleeper holds
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