Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

Would you believe there’s another film called The Lost City (2005). That one stars Andy Garcia and Inés Sastre and has nothing to do with the 2022 title. Bill Murray is in it though. Actually it sounds pretty good.

How old is Sandra Bullock now? Like 400? I think we might need to keep an eye on her and make sure she’s not stealing people’s youth and vigor with her retractable canine teeth at night.

Not to say anything bad about Sandra. She’s awesome. I’m just saying she might be an undead creature of the night, a Vampír Nosferatu, that’s all.

I suppose I should dig into the plot a bit. Loretta (Sandra) is an esteemed writer of trashy romance novels. Alan (Channing Tatum) is her cover model. They get caught up in a plot (Thank God!) that lands them in the jungle (naturally) pitting them against a ruthless treasure hunter (Daniel Radcliffe).

I really appreciated the character’s evolution throughout this film. Loretta and Alan start with some unfair presuppositions about each other. Loretta’s suppositions about Alan are pretty obvious at first, regarding him simply as brainless eye-candy, just a cover-model because that must be all he’s good at. Alan is a bright lad however, and intends to show Loretta her assumptions are wildly incorrect about him.

Alan has a few assumptions he’s made about Loretta though too. His are less obvious and take a while to come out. They spend the movie learning about each other through the situations they find themselves in. It’s pretty good storytelling.

Daniel Radcliffe is awesome as always. Always a joy to watch. He does a great villain, surprisingly, even while not taking himself too seriously. He’s clearly having fun with this role.

The crescendo of this film is fantastic! I don’t want to spoil it for you, partly because it’s really fun and partly because I can’t remember if the climax I’m remembering is in this movie or the Uncharted movie. Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Holland are interchangeable in my memory.

Brad Pitt drops in at one point. His involvement is probably the funniest part of this whole film as he goes full action hero while Tatum is really trying to help. Pitt is so fast and deft with his abilities he pretty much has things taken care of while Tatum is still figuring out what to do. Meanwhile Pitt is super encouraging and grateful for Tatum’s effort, futile as it is.

The film was not at all what I was expecting. Very funny. Great action. Very funny during great action. Great funny very action during. Oo, I blacked out there for a second.

Anyway, loved Uncharted. Highly recommend.