Movie Review: ‘The Lost City’ a Crowd Pleaser

A lot of movies will have you checking your watch; The Lost City creates a strong urge to check your calendar. As I soaked up the premise, I thought: Did I step through a time portal and wind up in 1986? When I exited the theater, would people be talking about Max Headroom, New Coke, and the Iran-Contra scandal?

But the throwback the film offers is to a perfectly serviceable formula that should not have been discarded: the opposites-attract rom-com adventure. The Lost City is a smoothly engineered crowd-pleaser with a few twists (including two huge surprises), lots of clever quips, and a wholly predictable structure. I’d like to see the movie succeed because I’d like to see studio movies break out of the superhero box in which they’ve gotten trapped and offer a broader range of options.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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A lot of movies will have you checking your watch; The Lost City creates a strong urge to check your calendar. As I soaked up the premise, I thought: Did I step through a time portal and wind up in 1986? When I exited the theater, would people be talking about Max Headroom, New Coke, and the Iran-Contra scandal?

But the throwback the film offers is to a perfectly serviceable formula that should not have been discarded: the opposites-attract rom-com adventure. The Lost City is a smoothly engineered crowd-pleaser with a few twists (including two huge surprises), lots of clever quips, and a wholly predictable structure. I’d like to see the movie succeed because I’d like to see studio movies break out of the superhero box in which they’ve gotten trapped and offer a broader range of options.