‘The Lost City’ starts fast but runs out of gas

“The Lost City” introduces us to a collection of humorously quirky characters and plops them down into a situation that has the potential for great laughs, adventure and fun. But as the plot runs on, the movie struggles to fulfill its potential and the satisfying payoff we were hoping for never comes.

This movie is the story of Loretta (Sandra Bullock), a past-her-price romance novelist who is abducted by rich, eccentric Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) and forced to decipher a piece of parchment that may reveal the location of a great treasure.

Alan (Channing Tatum), the model who graces the covers of all Loretta’s novels, hatches a hare-brained plan to her. The plan goes sideways, leading Alan and Loretta on a treasure quest through the jungle with Fairfax giving chase. Meanwhile, Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Loretta’s publicist, embarks on her own rescue mission to find her missing author.

The first act of “The Lost City” is great. We meet Loretta and learn that not only is she seeing less success with her writing but she’s also come to resent her own work. When she runs out of patience with her last book and decides to abruptly end the story, that feels familiar to anyone who’s been tangled up in some all-consuming project and decides to end it before it’s done.

We also get to meet Alan and see that not only does he like playing Loretta’s beefy male lead, Dash, but he also kind of like Loretta. We meet Fairfax and find out that, hey, this dude’s freaking looney.

And it’s all great fun until Loretta and Alan are lost in the jungle. Once the plot really takes hold and begins to drive the story, the movie loses itself. It begins to be less of a fun romp and more of a slog with occasional fun moments.

That’s a shame because there are some good comic performances in “The Lost City.” Bullock plays Loretta as a quirky shut-in who’s become lost in her past. Tatum is great, showing again that he can really knock those hot-yet-dumb-dude roles out of the park. Radcliffe is a blast playing an entitled rich kid. His manic scene-chewing is the biggest highlight of the movie.

Aside from the acting, this movie is mostly just a hodge-podge of predictable story beats and action sequences that don’t really raise the pulse. That would be fine if we were getting the same kind of effective character work and humor that we got in the first act. I got the sense that the movie was trying but just had too many things to do to give us any more of the character moments that worked so well to set the movie up. It almost seemed like the filmmakers hooked us with a character piece and then the studio mandated a standard-issue blockbuster plot.

“The Lost City” isn’t a terrible movie. It has a lot going for it, especially with the cast. I didn’t even mention how awesome Brad Pitt is in this movie. It just seems like the filmmakers lost sight of what their movie had going for it, panicked and gave us the same kind of treasure hunting adventure we’ve seen a hundred times.

2 ½ Indy Fedoras out of 5

MPAA Rating: PG-13