Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum send themselves up in entertaining adventure romcom

Sandra Bullock is Loretta Sage, a reclusive writer, a woman who churns out action-adventure mysteries but personally would rather shun the world than participate in any of it meaningfully.

She lost her husband a few years before and now finds herself trapped in the irony of conjuring extravagant and exciting new worlds and yet having absolutely nothing to do with them herself – much to the frustration of her publisher.

Making it all far worse for Loretta is the fact that her books’ hero Dash is being over-enthusiastically played by actor Alan (Channing Tatum), a guy so into the part that he is convinced he is actually Dash.

When her book comes out, Alan virtually takes over the press conference, shoving Loretta to the background in his determination to let his/her character speak for him.

It’s a total clash of opposites – and a strong set-up for directors Aaron Nee and Adam Nee and all the comic adventures that ensue.

The Lost City isn’t a film which will stay with you terribly long. In fact, you will have mostly forgotten it by the time you leave the cinema, but what you will retain is a warm and vaguely glowing sense of time enjoyably spent.

The key is that Bullock and Tatum, in letting their hair down, send themselves up to great effect: Tatum is the preening faux hero; Bullock is the neurotic, nervy amalgam of all the roles she’s ever played and their chemistry is good.

The gist is that Loretta, despite her life of isolation, is apparently well placed to find ancient treasure in the lost city she writes about in her latest story – and that’s why eccentric billionaire, the bizarrely named Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) kidnaps her, his eyes lighting up at the thought of yet more money.

Fortunately Radcliffe isn’t in the film too much. However beardy he gets, however much he tries to stretch his acting wings, he’s always going to be Harry Potter – and that’s a big distraction. Of course, he’s got to try different things, and but we just can’t have a Harry Potter who’s a baddie. The character doesn’t work and is pretty irritating besides.

There’s better fun to be had from Brad Pitt as the action adventure hero who briefly steps in to try to save Loretta, prompting Alan to up his game. Alan starts to show his mettle. It seems he really does want to be the romantic hero he kids himself he is.

And so inevitably, as they endure endless mishaps and endless exotic locations along the way, Loretta and Alan start to fall for each other… especially as they come to realise that their very survival depends on their actually working together.

All of which starts to draw Loretta out of her self-indulgent seclusion and Alan out of his peacocking and preening.

The film is utterly undemanding and likeably has no pretentions to be anything other than good harmless fun, and mostly it succeeds.

It is directed with decent pace, never really gets bogged down and offers a sparky script which gives all concerned plenty to work with.

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