The Screen Addict | The Lost City

Romancing the Stone (1984) and its sequel The Jewel of the Nile (1985) are two of my favorite Unsung Heroes of The Eighties (see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bad-films-unsung-heroes-eighties-robin-logjes). Don’t tell anyone, but there are even days when I prefer Jack Colton to Henry Jones – especially after the latter got involved with aliens and vine-swinging monkeys.

The concept of RtS in particular, remains rock-solid to this day – awkward, unadventurous lady (preferably a novelist) is forced to travel to exotic but dangerous country … hates but later falls in love with dashing rogue who rescues her from bad guys … the events forever change lady’s attitude towards life.

Rock-solid, but admittedly quite traditional in terms of gender roles. Presumably, filmmakers Adam and Aaron Nee thought the same thing when they wrote and directed The Lost City (2022), starring Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe and Brad Pitt.

The Nees’ film follows the central theme of RtS, but quickly flips it upside down and then sideways again when it comes to the expectations we as an audience typically have of male and female characters. Simultaneously however, it is very clear that the Nees truly and deeply adore RtS, as multiple lovely homages and references are littered across the film.

The result is a hugely entertaining and positively hilarious popcorn movie that is a genuine rarity among the Superheroes and Sequels of today. Nothing wrong with Superheroes and Sequels of course, but you just don’t see a whole lot of mid-budgeted movies based on fresh IP in theaters anymore, and that’s a shame.

Netflix, Prime Video et al. quite readily jumped into the “40-million-dollar gap” left in the theatrical lineup, with direct-to-platform releases such as The Man from Toronto (2022) and Without Remorse (2021). The more traditional cinema-driven studios however, generally steer clear of this type of release strategy. This makes it all the more surprising that Paramount Pictures chose to give TLC a robust theatrical release.

The move speaks volumes about the box-office draw of Bullock, Tatum and Pitt, by the way. Apparently these three belong to a very select group of celebrities who don’t necessarily need a $250 million budget to draw people in – just their names on the marquee and an ironclad script.

Proof that the RtS formula still works, is in the box-office pudding. TLC was an unambiguous hit for Paramount, grossing almost $200 million across the globe. A significant result for a studio that until very recently didn’t shy away from rerouting films that were originally destined for a theatrical window – Coming 2 America (2021), The Tomorrow War (2021) – to a straight-to-streaming construction with preferred partner Prime Video.

Either way, solid recommend.

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