A Legacy Sequel that Improves on the Legacy: A Review of Top Gun: Maverick

directed by Joseph Kosinsky

written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Martin Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig and Justin Marks

If I'm perfectly honest, I was not the biggest fan of the 1986 film Top Gun growing up. I watched it in theaters, and I did enjoy it, but the older I got, the less I cared for the film. While other films of my youth like Aliens (which came out in the same year), Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park aged pretty well, Top Gun, which was quite unfortunately dated by its Cold War setting, did not. My feelings for the film are actually best summed up by this hilarious send-up prepared by the folks at Honest Trailers.      

It was to my great surprise, then, that when I saw the first trailer for this film, I felt an odd rush of nostalgia when I heard the first few notes of Harold Faltermeyer's now iconic "Top Gun Anthem." From a film that I would think about seeing when it came out, Top Gun: Maverick suddenly acquired an urgency that had not been there before.  The stellar reviews came in, a good chunk of which were from people who openly professed to hating the original film, and my curiosity reached a fever pitch.

So Top Gun: Maverick takes place over thirty years after the events of the first film, and we find Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise, naturally) testing hypersonic jets for the Navy. Maverick, who could easily have made Admiral by now, has dodged promotions his entire career so that he can stay in the air. Unfortunately, his testing facility is shut down by the big brass, who have decided against spending any more of taxpayers' money on manned aircraft. Fortunately for Mitchell, however, one of his old buddies, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer), who happens to be Admiral and the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet now, has a very special assignment for him over at the Naval Air Station North Island. Maverick finds himself returning to to the training facility where it all began: Top Gun.  This time, though, he's going back as an instructor, to train an elite group of pilots to perform an impossible mission (sorry) to take out a uranium enrichment plant in an unnamed enemy nation's army base deep in the mountains.  Crucially, one of the candidates for the mission happens to be Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller) the son of Maverick's best friend Nick "Goose" Bradshaw who died back when he and Maverick were students at Top Gun. There is serious bad blood between Maverick and Rooster as the former blocked the papers of the latter back when he was a cadet at the naval aviator's academy, setting him back a couple of years.  Maverick, of course, was only trying to protect Rooster, and acting on the secret request of his late mother. It's a challenging task ahead, with all of the clashing egos, and neither time, nor his commanding officer (Jon Hamm) is on Maverick's side. 

Apparently Tom Cruise was, for a time, not at all keen on revisiting this particular story because of concerns, among other things, that the first film felt a bit too propagandistic. Well, it's a good thing somebody changed his mind because in my humble opinion, Top Gun: Maverick is a rare thing: it's the legacy sequel done correctly.   Unlike recent legacy sequels that essentially kicked its beloved legacy characters to the curb (I'm looking at you, Star Wars), this film brings its main character forward and gives him a bit of growth as a character. The first film was about Maverick stepping out of the shadow of his father, this one is about him doing right by his surrogate son. It's a nice story of redemption, which is quite a step up from the paper-thin plot of the first film.  

What is even more significantly stepped up, however, is the sheer commitment to authenticity that's on display here; the flight sequences are gripping, and in this film much more emphasis is placed on the G-forces the pilots experience in the course of their training and, ultimately their mission, seemingly borrowing a little bit of a tension-generator from another 80s aviation classic, The Right Stuff.  Ed Harris, who played John Glenn in that film, makes an appearance here. These action sequences, at a time when everything in theaters feels like weightless CGI, are just wondrous to not just behold but to experience.

As the title suggests, this is Tom Cruise's movie through and through.  He's basically the only character left from the first film, with Val Kilmer only making the briefest appearance owing to his sickness, which is actually written into the film.  It's gratifying, though, that the filmmakers have cast Jennifer Connelly, who is reasonably close to Cruise's actual age, as Maverick's love interest Penny instead of going with the old trope of having him hook up with someone half his age.  It's a thankless role, but Connelly makes the most out of it, as does the talented young actress who plays Penny's teenaged daughter.  Call me grateful for small favors, but I'm also glad they didn't go for a hot and heavy love/make-out scene, focusing instead on how Maverick connects with Penny by communicating with her and laughing with her. This film doesn't just succeed because of its high-flying action sequences; as unlikely as this sounds it gets a lot of the quieter moments right, too.

Most importantly, to my mind this film works because of how it allows Maverick to grow older, just like the target audience. The fact that Cruise doesn't really "pass the torch" in this film to his younger cast mates has grated on some writers, but let's get real here; nobody's going to watch a movie called Top Gun: MAVERICK to see a bunch of millennials make the freaking title character look like an over-the-hill dotard. The Star Wars sequels, this ain't. Is it a bit of a fantasy to see a borderline senior citizen taking G-forces like a champ, flying rings around kids half his age? Maybe, but when it's this well-realized it's a fantasy one is willing to indulge. It's almost as silly as the reviewers poking fun at the fact that the enemy nation in this movie is completely anonymous, as if they WANT Hollywood to go around picking fights with other countries. Well, like one writer said: go ahead and make it Putin's Russia, if you want to. 

It's a little harder, however, to indulge the inherent silliness in the film's premise. The script takes pains to explain why the U.S. Navy has to use older model F-18s as opposed to more modern F-35s for the movie's big mission, but is conspicuously silent on why drones cannot be used for the mission, despite the fact that drones are the reason why Maverick's test flight program was shut down and would entail considerably less risk to human life.  I was paying close attention for the line that would explain this, but the reason never came. I guess the writers were just hoping the viewers would forget about this niggling detail when we would see the awesome actions sequences and, well, to be fair, for the duration of the film, at least I did. 

There's also a touch of silliness towards the climax of the film, which I won't spoil, but suffice it to say  that,  after managing to sell me on its (flawed) premise and draw me in with its remarkable verisimilitude, the film suddenly takes a turn into the borderline fantastical in its final few minutes, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of the ridiculous airport chase scene in the otherwise superlative film Argo.  As with Argo, though, this doesn't really detract from my overall enjoyment of the film.

This was a movie made for people my age, and I have to say, I quite liked it.  

  8.5/10

 

On Marvel's "Disney Plus Requirement" (SPOILER ALERT)

If you're both a box-office geek and a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan like I am, I've got a bit of bad news: in its second week-end of release, the latest MCU entry, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has dropped a steep 67% from its soaring opening weekend gross of $187 million in North America down to an estimated $61 million dollars  To put this into perspective, the much reviled 2003 film The Hulk (also produced by MCU head honcho Kevin Feige in his pre-MCU days, incidentally) had a similar 1st to 2nd weekend plummet, though of course it did not start out with such a mighty first weekend. All told, the second weekend of DS2 is the kind of opening weekend most studios would kill to have, especially in post-pandemic times. In terms of global box-office, the film experienced  a 60% drop-off from its opening week-end take, which is more important to this discussion, for reasons to be explained below.  

This has to be some cause for concern among the head honchos at Marvel, who have included front-loading into their box-office projections by now and who can usually expect between 50% to 60% percent 2nd weekend drops.   This movie, by rights, should have been in the upper echelons of Marvel's usual box-office hauls, considering the pedigree of those involved in the movie. It is, after all, Sam Raimi's first movie in almost ten years and his first superhero movie since 2007's Spider-Man 3. 

So what happened? Was it a really bad movie?  I certainly didn't think so, and with a 74% "Fresh" critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and with a verified audience score of 86%, I can reasonably say that a fair number of people agree with my assessment.  Also, its higher-than-expected box-office drop notwithstanding, it's still the number #1 movie in most of the world, so there's that. So why the higher-than-usual attrition?

 I'd just like to propound my own theory, and I'm fairly confident that I'm not alone in this.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness marks the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film that makes direct reference to the series of shows that Marvel launched on Disney+ last year. Specifically, DSITMOM serves as a direct sequel to Wandavision, the inaugural Marvel series that featured Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany's Vision living in a small town called Westview, despite the fact that Vision had died at the hands of Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.  That series ended with the revelation that, in her grief, Wanda had created a new Vision and even two children and had placed an entire small town in her magical thrall. It also ended with Wanda losing both the Vision and her magically-conjured offspring. To be entirely fair to Marvel head honcho Kevin Fiege, he was quite transparent about these plans quite early on, when he announced Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness months before the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench in everyone's plans.  

That said, there are a number of problems with this creative decision, some of which have admittedly been compounded by things beyond Feige's control.  

Among people who have watched Wandavision  there are a vocal number of viewers, including film critics, who feel that Wanda's turn from where she was at the end of that series to the full-on villain she has become by DSITMOM was somewhat abrupt and should not have happened off-camera. Still others are annoyed that Wanda has essentially stolen the show from Stephen Strange, even though the story itself is about how Strange and Wanda learn to deal with their own personal losses very differently.  

And THEN there are the droves of other fans from different countries all over the world, who do not have the benefit of being able to legally watch Disney+, and who therefore have no idea what the heck has happened to Wanda after the events of Avengers: Endgame.  While it would be unfair to blame Kevin Feige for the Walt Disney company's inability to make Disney+ available in every possible territory, I think it would fair to hold him responsible for  his failure to foresee how a hiccup like this could negatively impact the storytelling of the films. A lot of fans feel they have missed out on a major chapter in the character's journey.  This might not have mattered as much to the North American viewers who have ready access to Disney+, but it may have made a significant difference in outside territories that, for going on three years running now, still do not have Disney+. A 60% drop is not exactly insignificant. 

All of that said, DSITMOM is still destined to make a fortune at the global box-office, with a final projected gross of over $850 million and an outside chance at the coveted $1 billion, but with the level of hype behind it, plus Marvel's built-in fan loyalty this was always a given. I can't help but wonder, though, if Marvel will start to think about money they may have left on the table by tying their film so intimately into their Disney+ series. Sam Raimi's return to Marvel, after all, should, with theaters opening up quite a bit nowadays, have been an easy billion and not this emerging question mark as to whether it can actually make ten-figure territory. 

If a near-sure billion-dollar hit like this film can suffer what appears to be a bit of backlash for tying it so intimately into a TV series that not everyone around the world can watch, how does this bode for other series that are even MORE intimately tied into Disney+ series? How might this impact Captain America 4, which will directly follow up the events of the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, or The Marvels,  which is set to include a character set to make her debut in a Disney+ series this August? Notably, to celebrate the launch of the world's first Pakistani superhero, namely Ms. Marvel, Disney is making the unique and unprecedented move of reformatting all of the episodes of the TV series for theatrical release in Pakistan alone, for the simple reason that they still don't have Disney+ there. If only we could all get that kind of accommodation.  

Time will tell if Marvel can sustain its Phase 4 momentum with this new, added burden it is essentially putting on its viewers: to keep up with series that many of them cannot even watch.  

So...How About those Cameos (and other Spoilery Things About Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness)? MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING

 Again...

MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING

Okay, with that out of the way, I'm about to do a deep dive into how Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness lived up to a considerable bit of hype in some ways, and how it didn't in others.

Given how wildly successful Spider-Man: No Way Home turned out to be, largely due to the appearance of the two previous onscreen incarnations of the character as played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, it made sense for Disney to hop back on that particular hype train as they started marketing the next installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  That said, the cameos bruited about turned out to be far less significant than a lot of fans might have hoped they would be. 

So, as is clear to anyone who's already seen the film, of the ballyhooed cameo rumors, only the rumors of Patrick Stewart's return as Professor X and John Krasinski's casting as Reed Richards turned out to be true. These were some pretty amusing fan service moments, particularly Stewart's appearance, which was accompanied by the first few notes of the theme from the popular 90s X-Men cartoon as well as his exaggerated hand gestures accompanying the use of his telepathy, also drawn from the cartoon.  In the shadow of the more high-profile cameos, the other members of the so-called "Illuminati" namely Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell), alt-Captain Marvel (Lashana Lynch) and Blackagar Boltagon (a.k.a. Black Bolt, played  by Anson Mount) felt distinctly underwhelming.  I mean, the What If? series which debuted Captain Carter was one of the less warmly-received Disney+ series, the Captain Marvel film was a long way from being universally loved, and the Inhumans series in which Mount actually starred as Black Bolt was cancelled after one season.  

In truth, though, even if every single cameo had been the fulfillment of all fanboy dreams, the euphoria would have been short-lived as these appearances had far more in common with Deadpool 2 than they did with Spider-Man: No Way Home.  The entire Illuminati were basically mowed down by the Scarlet Witch in a short but somewhat gruesome sequence.  The description of Reed Richards as the "smartest man alive" felt a little chuckle-inducing after Wanda quite literally cut him to ribbons and popped his head like a balloon. 

It's actually a shame that so much of the conversation about this movie has swirled around the cameos, because they kind of distracted from the things about the movie that were much more noteworthy, like Elizabeth Olsen's absolutely outstanding performance, and the utterly bonkers direction by Sam Raimi which featured direct callbacks to his Evil Dead days as well as the mid-credits cameo that managed to fly under just about everyone's radar. 

It was refreshing to see Raimi and screenwriter Michael Waldron throw out the tired, old "third act twist" storytelling structure that's been used in too many Marvel movies (including the first Iron Man) and right up front, reveal Wanda to be the big bad.  The marketing materials had pretty much given this away, and pretty much everyone who'd seen the end of Wandavision knew this was coming, but the timing was nonetheless very effective.  Without the baggage of having to conceal a twist, Olsen was able to deliver a truly memorable bad guy, and one very true to Raimi's tradition, started in the Spider-Man movies, of having bad guys who weren't really bad, just terribly misguided souls.  The difference here is that, coming into the film, hardcore viewers already know what Wanda's been through and what has pushed her to this. 

It's also worth mentioning that for all of the focus on Wanda, this is still a Doctor Strange movie, as exemplified by his character arc, and by all of the major action set pieces featuring him, all of which have  Raimi's signature firmly inscribed. Strange's and Wong's battle with Gargantos, the giant tentacled one-eyed being, is arguably the most "traditional" Marvel battle, but given that it ends with Strange ripping out the creature's single eyeball, it's definitely a Raimi concoction.

But the real treat comes later in the film, when Strange meets another, more sinister version of himself, and engages in a magical battle with him which involves...musical notes. It is wildly imaginative, and the kind of thing you'd have to see (and hear) for yourself to really appreciate. It is also one of the reasons why Raimi was clearly born to direct a Doctor Strange movie; you would never see any other superhero doing something like this. 

And then, of course, there's the expertly-realized "dreamwalking" sequence, in which Strange, still trapped in another universe and wanting to save America Chavez, possesses the corpse of his alternate self who died in the beginning of the movie and which he buried in his home universe, "616." Far from just being a visual gimmick, Zombie Strange showcases a really cool, if frightening aspect of Strange's magical abilities, and is arguably THE single most "Sam Raimi" moment in the whole movie, albeit with a $200 million budget to realize it, and a two-time Academy-Award nominated actor shambling along like a zombie. Seeing Cumberbatch embrace the camp was the absolute icing on the cake.  

THESE are the things worth talking about, rather than the dime-store cameos that were good for a whoop and a cheer and then an "aaaauggh" when the characters met their grisly fate. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention cameos by two Raimi staples: Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell, who shows up as a hostile pizza ball vendor whom Strange enchants into punching himself, and Raimi's Oldsmobile Delta 88, which has appeared in all but one of his movies (that being the 1995 Western The Quick and the Dead, for obvious reasons).  These were both quite welcome, though I confess I didn't recognize Bruce Campbell right away; like many of us, the dude's gotten old. Special shout-out to my friend Aljay for pointing the cameo out. 

Finally, there's the cameo that apparently nobody knew about going into the movie, that of a very important Doctor Strange-related character, Clea, played by a very prominent actress, Furiosa herself, Charlize Theron. Her casting was not nearly as much of a coup as the fact that Marvel was able to keep her cameo completely under wraps, and it's clear they have plans for her in the near future, so this is cause for some celebration. 

So if I were hyping the movie, I'd say "come for the cameos, stay for the Raimi goodness!"

As Awesome as It Needed to Be: A Review of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

 directed by Sam Raimi

written by Michael Waldron

I wrote not too long ago that because Marvel and Sony had basically turned Doctor Strange into a glorified plot device in the global blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel would have to make it up to the character by making his own movie, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, a mind-blowingly awesome film.  I'll have to admit, as confident as I was in director Sam Raimi, stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen and the rest of the talented cast and crew, I could feel doubt begin to creep in as reports of extensive reshoots started dominating the news on the film in the months leading up to its release.  Had Marvel gotten it wrong, somehow?

Having seen it twice now, I would like to assert that, in my humble opinion, they have not. 

The film opens with a frenetic chase scene in which a slightly different-looking, Spanish-speaking Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and young America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) flee a mysterious, rather frightful-looking being through what looks like some kind of interdimensional plane, a nightmarish scenario from which the Doctor Strange we all know (also played by Cumberbatch), wakes up from in a fright. Later that day, though, he learns that this encounter was no dream as he and his fellow sorcerer Wong (Benedict Wong) end up saving America, who has somehow ended up in New York, from a  gigantic, one-eyed, tentacled monster.  America, it seems, has the power to travel between universes, which has made her a target for a mysterious pursuer. Recognizing the markings on the creature he has defeated as runes used in witchcraft, Strange seeks out the other powerful magic user he knows, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) who has been living the life of a recluse since recent events turned her life upside down. This request for help, however, does not turn out as Strange hopes, and before long, Strange finds himself not only fighting to save America Chavez, but the entire multiverse.

From the moment the Marvel fanfare ends, the movie hits the ground running and, quite frankly, never stops, which is very much a good thing.  Sam Raimi's fingerprints are all over everything in the film, from the quiet moments to the big action set pieces, and therefore I must respectfully, strenuously disagree with the critics decrying this film as "studio mandated." Quite the contrary, this feels like the MCU's single most stylized film, with due respect to the excellent work of the other directors whose work I've enjoyed. Raimi really puts his stamp on this film from everything to the transitions, the close-ups, the creepy build-ups to jump scares, and yes, even the performances from his actors, just about all of whom turn in outstanding performances, especially Cumberbatch and Olsen, who gets a far more generous helping of screen time than she ever has in any theatrical Marvel project up until this point. I'm just mildly annoyed that the series that did feature her, Wandavision is basically required viewing for this film considering that a substantial percentage of global audiences, including folks in this specific part of the world, still don't have Disney+.   Still, regardless of whether or not one knows Wanda's backstory through that series, which is quite crucial to understanding her character's journey, there can be no denying that Olsen has turned in an incredible performance.  Cumberbatch, who plays as many as four different versions of Doctor Strange, brings his "A" game here and reminds us all of why he was such a perfect fit for this role in the first place. Benedict Wong's Wong gets a much welcome expansion of his screen time and importance. Newcomer Xochitl Gomez makes the most out of what she's given, but more on that later.

Lovers of the Spider-Man trilogy (only 2/3 of which, really, is fondly remembered) may want to crucify me for what I'm about to say next, but I will go ahead and say it: having seen Darkman and at least two of the Evil Dead movies, I have to say that Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness feels more like a Sam Raimi movie than any installment of Sony's groundbreaking superhero trilogy. Spider-Man 2 had the operating room scene as its signature Raimi sequence, but this film has a whole bunch of those. If I'm perfectly honest, I'm quite surprised that this movie managed to squeak by with a PG-13 rating; somewhere in the third act my eight-year-old shouted "this is a horror movie!" and she wasn't wrong. 

Raimi has clearly been given a pretty big sandbox to play with by Kevin Feige, and as a result the storytelling can get pretty intense, and his visuals definitely get extra trippy.  Sure, there is the requisite massive dose of CGI used to depict the multiverse, but Raimi uses it quite effectively, and arguably more so than Scott Derrickson did in the first film. The "multiverse jump" scene which partially features in the trailer, with Strange's face coming apart, is actually even more entertaining in its full form.  

Also, I'm happy to note that the film does not get bogged down in fan service here; the much vaunted cameos the internet has been buzzing about do not dominate the movie; they're worth a cheer and a whoop or two, but nothing to really distract from the overall story. Make of that what you will, and I guarantee you this will not diminish your enjoyment of this film. Conversely, if you go into the movie expecting cameos on the level of Spider-Man: No Way Home, prepare to be disappointed.  

If the film does have any weak links, the most prominent would have to be its supposed breakthrough character, America Chavez. Xochitl Gomez turns in a decent performance, but the role is so sparsely written that it's painfully clear that she is little more than a plot device, essentially the mechanism to make the multiverse work. To put it even more cynically, she's basically a MacGuffin.  I expected better from the writer of Loki. 

Also, this isn't so much as a criticism as it is me scratching my head: what the heck was the point of Rintrah, the green minotaur guy who basically stood around Kamar-Taj and later got his butt kicked, without contributing anything at all to the story?  Given how relatively obscure the character is it didn't seem like the best form of fan service, and he had to have cost at least some tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) in computer-generated imagery.

To go back to the positives, though, I genuinely enjoyed that apart from the callbacks to Wandavision and Spider-Man: No Way Home, this film does not play out like a set-up for the next big Marvel event. Sure, there are the obligatory mid and post credits scenes, one of which teases for future adventures for Doctor Strange, but there's nothing that screams "everybody has to get together to fight the next big thing" in this film, and I was honestly relieved that this was the case. 

Almost forgot: I'd be remiss if I failed to mention one of the major pluses of the movie for me, and that is a surprisingly robust music score by veteran composer and longtime Raimi collaborator Danny Elfman. I was initially upset that they had replaced the original Doctor Strange composer Michael Giacchino with Elfman, as I was a big fan of the score Giacchino had composed for the first film, and was worried that Elfman would just trot out a remix of his previous work with Raimi and Tim Burton.  Also, Elfman's last work for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a last-minute substitute for Brian Tyler on Avengers: Age of Ultron had been nothing to write home about.  It was much to my surprise, therefore, that Elfman turned out a rich, moving score for this film, and I say that as someone who has followed his work since 1988's Beetlejuice.  Does it sound Burtonesque? Sure, at times, but it really highlights the film's emotional beats and marks the characters' emotional journey without being cloying. Wanda's theme is downright haunting at times, and I hope Kevin Feige and his brain trust consider this theme as canon, moving forward, given how Marvel has come more and more to embrace the importance of music in their films.

Critics may not be as solidly behind this movie as they were the first one, but I'm a fan of how Marvel let Sam Raimi do his thing with one of their prized properties and heartily recommend this film to anyone interested.

7.5/10

A Fun Little Throwback: A Review of The Lost City

directed by Adam and Aaron Nee

written by Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam and Aaron Nee, and Seth Gordon

I had contemplated reviewing this on my YouTube channel, which has a bit of a broader audience than this blog (ever since I started filtering out the bots), but writing movie reviews, in my opinion anyway, is a bit of a dying art so I decided to keep this here so that, even as I keep putting up content on my vlog, I keep this fresh and updated with new reviews.

Anyway, the movie in question is The Lost City, directed by relative newcomers Adam and Aaron Nee and starring Hollywood A-listers Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum.  The film actually marks Bullock's triumphant post-pandemic return to theaters after her 2018 film Bird Box spent little time in theaters before heading to Netflix.

In the film, Bullock plays highly-successful romance novelist Loretta Sage, a PhD holder and failed archaeologist/historian who, frustrated with her lack of success in her preferred profession and disheartened by the death of her husband and archaeological partner, has decided instead to take her volumes of historical knowledge and repackage them as trashy romance novels, which have proven to be a huge hit among women.  Catapulting to success along with Loretta is her cover model Alan (Channing Tatum) whose likeness adorns her books as the long-haired he-man Dash. The thing is, though, Loretta hates her job and has to be dragged virtually kicking and screaming to her latest book tour by her agent Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph).  Upon leaving her latest, disastrous book tour, however, Loretta finds herself abducted by the wealthy Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe) a collector of the obscure who recognizes the historicity behind Loretta's writing and wants to use her knowledge to find the lost city described in one of her books, specifically the priceless crown found in that city.  Having witnessed her kidnapping, Alan, who secretly has a crush on Loretta, hires exfiltration expert Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt) and follows her to the the remote island in the Atlantic to which Fairfax has whisked her. Hijinks ensue, and before long both author and cover model find themselves completely out of their element and on the run from Fairfax and his army of goons, but not not before Loretta realizes that she may be on the verge of finally finding the lost city she and her husband spent years looking for. 

The movie is good (if a bit dumb) fun, and the kind of film we've seen less and less of since IP-powered movies started  dominating the landscape several years ago. It's oddly fitting that the former Harry Potter Radcliffe himself helps bring a star-driven movie like this back to cineplexes.  Sandra Bullock plays an older, wearier version of the harried career woman with which she built her career in movies like Miss Congeniality and The Proposal, among others, while Channing Tatum trots out the dimwitted beefcake he played in both 21 Jump Street movie adaptations, and Brad Pitt plays a role that borders on self-parody, but you know what? It totally works.    

The movie's plot has the proverbial holes big enough to drive trucks through, as well as such a frayed connection to reality that it's a small wonder it makes it to the end without completely collapsing, but the redeeming aspect here is Bullock's and Tatum's comedic (if not necessarily romantic) chemistry together. Sure, it borders on the exploitative at times (mentally gender flip the scene involving leeches and you'll know what I mean) but the dynamic still works on the whole, and truth be told, it's actually quite refreshing to see the whole "older-leading-man-with-younger-leading-woman" trope totally turned on its head.

The movie's main virtue is that it is genuinely funny thanks to some good comedic timing and chemistry from its lead actors, and to its directors' willingness to lean hard into some romance movie tropes and mine them for their inherent humor.  The film also benefits from some really gorgeous scenery, which is a must for movies like this, and from a surprisingly engaging musical score from relatively unknown composer Pinar Toprak (Captain Marvel) who does an awesome remix of a fantastically cheesy 80s song. 

I'm glad they no longer spend huge amounts of money on movies like this (the movie was a relatively frugal $70-plus million); it's a good thing that we've moved on from the time when star-driven vehicles were basically the only show in town.  Because movies like this have to survive in a marketplace where IP-based franchise fare rules, filmmakers can no longer just throw unconscionable amounts of money at movie stars and hope their faces are enough to put fannies in the seats; they have  to try to engage the audiences with something entertaining. 

Fortunately, this time, they managed to do just that.   

7/10