Review: 'The Lost City' delivers forgettable fun, but stars Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are charming together

There was a time when a movie like “The Lost City” would arrive, promising good-looking movie stars doing silly things through a wafer-thin plot, and we’d all enjoy ourselves and forget about the experience by the time we got back to our car.

“The Lost City” delivers that same kind of fun, forgettable moviegoing that we used to do — and if that’s not a sign that we’re returning to “normal,” I don’t know what is.

The pretty stars here are Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum — and let’s hear it for a movie that runs the 16-year age gap between its stars in the not-usual direction. Bullock plays Loretta Sage, a former archaeologist turned romance novelist, who hides out in her house to avoid dealing with the world or her widowhood, now going on five years. Tatum plays Alan, the male model who graces the covers of Loretta’s books, who’s really into the role of Loretta’s hero, Dash.

Loretta and Alan don’t get along — though it’s more accurate to say that Loretta doesn’t like Alan; his feelings for her are rather more complicated. So Alan becomes determined to rescue Loretta when the book tour for her latest novel, “The Lost City of D,” is interrupted by a crazed billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who kidnaps her when she’s wearing a body-hugging sequined magenta jumpsuit that makes her look like a 5-foot-7 bike reflector.

The billionaire — whose name, Abigail Fairfax, is just one of the things for which he’s overcompensating — believes Loretta, because of the archaeological knowledge she embeds in her romances, has the key to discovering the real “Lost City,” on a tropical Atlantic island.

Alan’s plan to rescue Loretta centers on getting her publisher, Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), to hire a savvy tracker, Jack (Brad Pitt), to infiltrate the island and save Loretta. Alan can’t help but tag along, though, which becomes important when — for reasons I don’t want to spoil — the rescue falls on Alan to complete.

The tag-teamed script boasts five credited writers — the last two being the directors, brothers Adam and Aaron Nee — and is a carefree mishmash of “Indiana Jones” adventure and romantic comedy squabbling. It’s that banter, between Bullock’s flinty Loretta and Tatum’s eager-to-please Alan that provides most of the movie’s entertainment value, though a word of praise for Radcliffe’s petulant villain and Randolph’s scene-stealing as Beth, traversing the Atlantic in pursuit of her star author.

“The Lost City” isn’t a big movie, even with its big stars. It’s out to provide audiences with an undemanding good time. It’s a modest goal, but it’s one the movie reaches.

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‘The Lost City’

★★★

Opens Friday, March 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence and some bloody images, suggestive material, partial nudity and language. Running time: 112 minutes.