This week, the guys review "The Lost City," the 2022 Netflix romantic comedy starring Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock. Listen and be amazed as they get lost in the dense, disorienting jungle of performances, writing, and wardrobe choices. Was it a worthy addition to the rom-com genre or did it remind them a little too much of better films...??? The answer is the second one.
This week, the guys review "The Lost City," the 2022 Netflix romantic comedy starring Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock. Listen and be amazed as they get lost in the dense, disorienting jungle of performances, writing, and wardrobe choices. Was it a worthy addition to the rom-com genre or did it remind them a little too much of better films...??? The answer is the second one.
The Lost City, Peninsula, and Train to Busan are available wherever finer data packets are streamed.
The Kanopy app + your library card = free tv and movies that stream to your devices.
Reach the pod at DontEncourage@gmail.com
Discourage us on Instagram @DontEncourageUs
---------Spoilers Ahead--------
Jason: In all honesty, I never realized how incredibly charismatic Brad Pitt is until I saw him in scenes with Channing Tatum,
Steve: where he was supposed to be the romantic lead, but in fact, he was actually just working for the bad guys the whole time, cuz he changed so dramatically.
Jason: What kind of ape is Cha Channing Tatum,
welcome to, don't Encourage us, the podcast where we talk about the big ideas and fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limit. And make sure you stay away from those like and subscribe icons. Uh, my other question is, should I punch that title, kind of eighties sitcom style?
Like, welcome to, don't Encourage Us. Yeah, I,
Steve: I think you should try it. You should have a couple different versions of that intro.
Jason: Don't encourage us.
Steve: Well, like Steve Kel style.
Jason: Did I do that? Welcome to, did I do that? That's really funny. Okay, so what fiction have you been absorbing this
Steve: week? A movie by the name of The Lost City with
Jason: us. Ok. But bef that's our, that's our, uh, title track. It is fiction. It is true.
Steve: It's fiction. I haven't really been reading anything that's fiction.
I've just been reading maybe some nonfiction, some articles, keeping up with Monkeypox cuz that's uh, that's the latest virus I
Jason: wish we were looking out for. Yeah, you better, right? Mr. High risk. Well I watched, uh, trained Busan two Peninsula, our previous discussion. Yeah. So, uh, now I can talk intelligently about that.
I got a question for you though. Did the creator of that want to make a heist film a kids movie? Or a sequel to Fast and Furious?
Steve: I'd say yes to all of tho those three. I dunno, I really saw more of a, as a heist film, there was also a zombie movie that took place in Las Vegas that was similar. I mean,
Jason: if you liked it, that's awesome.
Um, I think a lot of people who liked Zack Schneider liked that kind of thing, but I think a lot of those people were internet bots. So I loved Train to Busan and this movie was so, so different. The zombies were really sort of treated like a natural disaster, basically. Mm-hmm. Like you remember there was a heist movie that occurred during a flood where, uh, you know, there was like Mississippi or whatever it flooded and they were going in to like Christian Slater or something.
That sounds right. And Morgan Freeman. That sounds also correct. Yeah. And so the obstacle in part, well it was mostly other people, but in part it was also the water. That's how this felt to me, at least the portions of it that felt like a heist film is that the zombies had been downgraded from sort of the genre element.
Mm-hmm. To just sort of an occasional flood. Like when they're driving along and the bad guys are shooting flares, they may as well have been like blowing like dams on either side or like, uh, you know, sandbags and allowing water to flood in because that's really all they amounted to. So I thought that was really weird.
Mm-hmm. Not what I was looking for out of this film, I think. So that was kind of strange. And then there was a bunch of stuff with the two kids, really long periods where they were driving or doing cutesy little kids things with like remote controlled cars and stuff. Right. And it really felt like a kid's movie.
I mean, the kids seem totally safe, the whole film. At no point did they seem like they're in any real danger. Mm-hmm. That's very different. Than the previous movie. And this one started off in my mind so positively because in the first eight, nine minutes they kill a kid, which usually is a sign of a zombie movie getting pretty dark.
Right? But it was almost like they undid that very quickly. Does it make sense? Yeah. I
Steve: wonder if it had anything to do, what critics thought of the first one, or maybe commentary from critics in terms of how intense the first one is and the director wanted to lighten it up,
Jason: you know? Yeah. Or reach a larger audience, or he really wanted to make a movie set in the Mad Max Universe because it had that whole thunderdome element in it.
Very much so driving around in the car, and it really seemed like he spent the time between trained Busan and Peninsula watching a lot of very popular movies and being like, well, let's take a slice outta that.
Steve: It did have that Mad Max feel. Very much so. Yeah. I like post apocalyptic world
Jason: feel to it.
Mm-hmm. Very Tina Turner esque. So I watched that on, uh, canopy. Canopy is what exactly. It's an app, it's free. You plug in your free library card number, which I went and renewed, took five seconds. And then you have access to tons and tons of TV shows and movies. It's actually really good because there's a lot of stuff, and I don't know if this is intentional or not, but like somehow it's not a, on Netflix, H B O, Amazon for less than $7.
Uh, it's not on Hulu. It's not, you know, you go through 'em all. It's not on Tuby, it's not on freebie, it's not on all that stuff. And then you go to Canopy and it's there. I
Steve: think it works with the libraries, right? Yes. So I think studios, if I'm not mistaken, and publishers have special agreements with libraries for everything they have or the most popular things in their collection where they just.
Give away certain amount of digital copies to these types of services. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Where they might not have those license agreements within Netflix or Hulu or an Amazon Prime video. Cause I think they're getting it either at a deep discount or they're just getting it as part of like the library system that pays for that license.
Jason: So, yeah, that sounds right. And it's great, you know, when you check out a book, you have it for like two weeks or whatever. Mm-hmm. Even if it's a digital copy, but with a movie, it seems like you stream it. And if they have two copies, how many people are gonna be streaming Peninsula at the same time? Right.
And then one hour and 48 minutes later you can somewhere jump on board, you know? Yeah, yeah. Next. So it's actually been really nice. I did it a long time ago and I forgot about it and it's been super helpful for our podcast.
Steve: Are you watching it on a laptop or you have it on your projector somehow, or you're
Jason: Uh, I use my iPad and I have an adapter.
I plug the HD cable. For my projector into the adapter that goes into the iPad and I get super high quality. Oh, that's cool. I think people think because there are streaming services and there are sort of host platforms for those streaming services that you're limited to that, but there's so many adapters and things like that, that if you don't mind leaving some cables accessible, uh, in your home entertainment system, you can swap 'em real easy or buy little changers that'll allow you to swap it.
But, uh, if you do a little bit of that for, you know, just the price of the devices you might already have, like, I can use my cell phone to stream canopy to my projector and I don't even need to use, uh, like wireless or Bluetooth, which lowers the quality and there's buffering issues and things like that.
So you're just plugging directly into it. No. Like degradation of the image, anything? No, and it's super high quality. It's actually even higher quality than my PlayStation. Wow. Which is wow, surprising, but I think PlayStation four, they decided to go on the cheap end for that, so That's very interesting.
Steve: Yeah, I'll definitely check that out. That sounds really, I recommend it really useful.
Jason: Also the, uh, internet archives. I think I was calling the internet database, but it's the internet archive and I don't like how things are organized. So when you look up something with a similar name to other things, you're gonna get a thousand results that in no way meet your criteria.
But if it has somewhat of a unique name, there's a good chance it's there, especially if it's been around for a few years and totally free as well. No question. That's very cool. Yeah, I'll check that out too. Yeah, I think, again, people get the idea that because there are streaming services, that you have to go through those, but you really don't at all.
That's great. It just takes a little bit of work to get the connections the way you like 'em or to be able to access these apps or websites smoothly. But if you do it, then you know you don't need to pirate and you don't need to pay anything. That's really cool. Crazy this, that's why we get canceled. Big business.
Comcast is gonna give me internet ghosts for that.
Steve: That's right. They're docking you right now. They're listening to you on all your devices.
Jason: But as you mentioned today, the project for today is The Lost City, the 2022 Comedy by um, paramount Films directed by Aaron and Adam Knee. I don't know if you know the Knee Brothers, but they are slated to direct the He-Man movie.
Oh,
Steve: really? I didn't
Jason: know that. I hadn't heard of them before. No, they haven't done much. I, I did look at what they've done and I didn't recognize any of it. I imagine they did something that's worth mentioning, but nothing that really I've seen or enjoyed or even heard of. But the He-Man movie, and they may or may not end up directing it and all that kind of stuff.
Mm-hmm. But apparently that's what they have up next. Is anyone attached
Steve: to it play
Jason: Heon? Probably. I think I heard a couple rumors a while ago, but at the pace things change these days, I, I don't think they're even worth looking up or remembering. Mm-hmm. I don't know who plays Dolph Lundin's kid and the Rocky Spinoffs or whatever, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was him just because there's like a random connection there, you know?
Right. He
Steve: was in the original right from the eighties.
Jason: Yeah. That was something else. Yeah. They put like a Willow character in there for no reason and I don't recommend it. That's, that's not a must see. Pretty strange. Although it did have Courtney Cox in it. I don't know if you remember the He-Man cartoon, but it had a Courtney Cox character in every episode.
I
Steve: just remember Skeletor and then like how Skeletor became basically a
Jason: meme for ages. I feel like you're making fun of Courtney Cox. I'm trying not. Two different, two different characters. She did not play Skeletor. I'm try not to.
Steve: That wasn't her.
Jason: Uh, all right. So where did you watch this film? I
Steve: watched it here in New York in my room room
Jason: on Amazon Prime.
I understand what you're asking me. All right, so you watched it on Amazon Prime and you, I assume you had to pay for that, I guess. Is that Yes, where we're at? Okay.
Steve: No, it was like three bucks or something. I don't know. It wasn't very
Jason: expensive. I watched it on Paramount Plus, but I still can't figure out what the Plus in Paramount Plus stands for.
It's definitely not content.
Steve: They randomly add pluses to every streaming service now, so that's basically like Disney plus, cuz they can't do be original enough to name it something else. So they just add a plus and call it a day.
Jason: It definitely could be that. It also occurred to me it might be a math equation and the executives haven't finished it yet.
Like we know it's paramount plus something, but we haven't figured out what that's gonna be like. We know we definitely don't have enough content for a streaming service. So how about Paramount Plus? An oil chain or a carpet, steam cleaning. You know, I signed up three months ago and I'm still waiting to find out what I get for my money.
The plus
Steve: the bonus bonus Miles, maybe it's discounts on groceries, cash back,
Jason: airline, miles. You should give 'em a call and complain. It's paramount. Plus airline miles. Okay, so as always, spoiler warning, we are gonna completely spoil this movie and probably several others, but if you're interested in The Lost City, then head to Amazon or Paramount or, I dunno, your local dollar theater, is that still a thing?
It's
Steve: maybe catch it on vhs.
Jason: If you can, uh, watch it. Maybe you'll enjoy it. It's not the worst movie I've seen ever. So, uh, again, heads up, we're gonna completely spoil this film. It's certainly not the best movie you've
Steve: seen. So there's
Jason: that. Steve, why don't you entertain us with the Tale of the Lost City.
What's this movie about?
Steve: Still lost City is about a romance writer who is on a book tour and she's wearing a sequin jumpsuit plot, which is, yeah, plot apparently a very important plot, plot,
Jason: plot, point plot throughout the movie plot point.
Steve: Remember that plot plot point? There's a, the cover of her romance novel has a model.
His name is Dash, and he ends up going on a book tour with her. She ends up ripping off his wig, which is apparently very, very funny. She then gets kidnapped. By a villain who is looking for, what is it here? Kingman's Crown of Fire. So original and played by um, Mr. Radcliff, Harry Potter from Harry Potter fame, and he doesn't really go into why he wants this crown of, he just wants it.
He's from a very wealthy, kind of like a media mogul type of family that they don't really get into, or does he get into it and I missed it. There's no real reason why he wants to crown a fire or he
Jason: just wants, it's not a good reason. Yeah. I think the implication was that he's jealous of his older brother and he for some reason considers this a worthy achievement.
Whereas I think it would probably me be more like 13 stories down and a small blurb on your newsfeed. It wouldn't be the CNN headline, it would just be going by on the scroll. Like, uh, Harry Potter finds jeweled crown just goes by the bottom right. But he seems to think this will equal or surpass the achievements of his, uh,
Steve: successful brother.
He reads a passage in her novel, which leads him to believe that she holds the key to figuring out where Mr. King Kalman's tomb is.
Jason: Well, she, uh, specifically in her romance novel had actual translation of a real That's right. Ancient language. Yeah. Because her husband, who's now dead, we're told, was an archeologist and she must have studied archeology.
I think she said she did in college, I think. And that's where they met. Right. So she actually literally translated a dead language. He recognized that no one else has translated it, and he has like a fragment that he want translated. Mm-hmm.
Steve: It gets better. So he puts her on his private plane to this lost island, and he's bought the island, I believe.
And they have, he bought the
Jason: southern half
Steve: part of it, the southern, and that's, that's an important plot point. He bought the part with the volcano. There's this lost city in, on this lost island, presumably. Mm-hmm. Or island. And he's forcing her to figure out exactly where this tomb is. She's telling him that she can't, he insists that she knows, he straps her to a chair and she's still wearing her sequined purple jumpsuit, which is very important throughout the whole movie plot
point.
Steve: Yeah. So her sidekick. Friend back home who I think is her publicist manager, representative of
Jason: some sort. I believe the technical term is, doesn't matter.
Steve: Doesn't matter. Yeah, exactly. A throwaway character and dash who is this cover model, they figure out where she is because of her, what is it? Her smartphone, her watch that she's
Jason: wearing.
Because well, when you're flying watches still do a great job connecting to the internet.
Steve: Exactly. And they figure out that she's on a plane somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Mm-hmm. And Dash who is the cover model, remembers having trained with a guy named Jack Trainor. Mm-hmm. Which is hilarious cuz his name's Jack Trainor.
It actually is Jack Trainor. He's not just a trainer.
Jason: I'm glad you explained that. A
Steve: great, a great part. Well, that was really important to this part of the, uh, of the movie. They're like, oh, his name is actually Jack
Jason: Trainor. You're pausing for the joke in the film. Right. That's very good. So
Steve: Jack Trainor played by Brad Pitt is hired by, uh, dash and the Sidekick, and then ends up going to this island, ends up trying to rescue her.
That was actually a great scene. He played that role really well. I thought Brad Pitt. Mm-hmm. Of like the hero, like the stereotypical hero who's like indestructible. And he has his sidekick Dash who's running behind him the whole time, trying to keep up. And he's like a special forces type of guy who's going to rescue her.
He finally unties her, or not unties her, actually, he actually grabs her if she's sitting in a chair and then drags her through the jungle. There's a car. Chase Jack Trainor ends up getting shot by a sniper, which ends up leaving. Our friend, uh, dash and her alone in the jungle. Then Hijinks ens Sue after that where she's trying to, there go where she's trying to figure out, you know, where this tomb is, where the crown is.
They're being chased of the jungle by the bad guys, the henchman and uh, Daniel Radcliffe. During that time in the jungle, there's the typical kind of romancing, the stone buddy comedy type of thing, ro romantic tension built between the two characters, which is really kind of, kind of forced. I'd say, and then, yeah.
You wanna take it from there? Go right
Jason: ahead. So they are on the run in the jungle. They're bonding and getting over each other's similar personalities. They eventually, what do they get caught several times? Sort of, it just seems like theme sort of. Yeah. Yeah. And ultimately they're forced to, uh, like, well, what's her name?
Uh, Joan Wilder. The character is forced to. They translate, find their way through the tomb, they get to the actual location of the city or through the cave and the volcano. They get to the location. Predictable stuff happens. The good guys seems like everything is lost. The volcanoes exploding and come, and it's all coming down around them.
They manage to escape. They catch up with Harry Potter and uh, ultimately they're rescued and everybody lives happily ever after. Right. Yeah.
Steve: That's a really good summary. I thought that, uh, that second part or the last, uh, quarter was gonna take longer to explain, but then thinking back on it, really that's all that happened in there, much,
Jason: much less.
It would take, it would take a lot longer if people hadn't seen this movie 12 times before. Exactly. So if you haven't seen this movie, imagine two people who are fish outta water lost in the jungle, being chased by goons. They also want to find some sort of native treasure, and that's it. That's exactly what you would imagine happening is what happens.
And
Steve: between the running around, there's a couple pauses. So one where they jump into a hammock together and it's really hard to stay in the hammock without one of them falling out and that
lasts
Jason: a while. Yeah. You're explaining this, but I feel like somebody could have guessed that that would happen. Oh, I'm sure they're guessing right now.
Like some something awkward around the sleeping situation. Mm-hmm. You know, if I said true, false. I'll bet you a hundred percent people would go true awkwardness around the sleeping situation.
Steve: So like if you ask if there's gonna be a leeches scene, if they go in a river,
Jason: true or false, a hundred percent accuracy.
That's right. This podcast is all about positivity. So let's give a solid minute to say, saying nice things about this film. What do you think? That sounds like a good plan. So I'm gonna start the timer and I'm gonna throw out a positive thing and then you throw out a positive thing. Sure. And then I'll throw out a positive thing and whichever one of us dies first loses, or if the timer ends, then we both survive.
All right. You ready? Sounds good. All right. In all honesty, I never realized how incredibly charismatic Brad Pitt is until I saw him in scenes with Channing
Steve: Tatum. I was gonna say the same thing. So now I have to say something else. At least this movie wasn't
Jason: three hours long. That's right. Could have been longer.
That is very positive. Excellent. Actually, it would've been more positive if the Volcano, it somehow erupted halfway through. But I'll take your positive statement.
Steve: I thought the sound design was actually pretty well done. There wasn't anything jarring like in a lot of other movies, they spent
Jason: some time on it.
You're just saying that because the last movie we watched lowered your Bar. There's
Steve: a big reason. Yeah. I wasn't distracted like I was during Pulse during the whole thing. Yeah. So I don't know if it's really the greatest sound design. Oh, that was. Or competitively
Jason: speaking. Wow. You wanna do another minute?
Yeah, why not? Okay. I actually did laugh out loud once during this film. It was when Oscar tackled, uh, Harry Potter and the millennial market segment, and when he was running away on the boat and Oscar tackled him and he goes, so stupid. You're running away. It's a boat. Where are you gonna go? I actually thought that was pretty funny.
Yeah. I
Steve: also thought it was funny when her friend, uh, said that she's found, uh, the villain. She thought he was a little boy, but then she saw he had a, a beard. I thought that was really funny.
Jason: That's awesome. My, probably my most positive thing to say about this movie is it made me feel completely comfortable with my decision to cancel Paramount.
Plus,
Steve: I would say I really enjoyed the scene with Brad Pitt, the action scene. I thought it was really well done with him and Channing Tatum. I thought it was really silly the way that he went in there trying to rescue her. How are you? Hey, that's it, and that's our podcast, everybody. It's great having you.
You've got the summary of the movie, you know where to see it.
Jason: We'll be back here next week. That should be it. We should just stop here. All right. If you're, uh, if you're not in the mood for negativity, this is your chance to get off the bus. We'll pause. All
Steve: right, everybody, you still here?
Jason: You asked for it.
Are you ready? Here's my five minutes on nut milks. No, but, but seriously, this movie left me with a lot of questions. Like it was, it was complicated in a way I didn't expect. There are a lot of mysteries. I know the idea of the movie is there's a mystery, but I think there were like multiple layers of mystery within that.
I don't know if you mind answering my questions. I think it would, it might help some people who had similar questions. What do you think? Sure. Let's try it. Biggest question I had. The first thing that popped in my mind and was really distracting throughout the whole film because I felt lost. What kind of ape is Channing Tatum?
I mean, initially I would've guessed gorilla, but his face and ears make me think more chimpanzee. This is a positive podcast. Is he some sort of hybrid? Is this like a Congo situation where he was bred to guard jungle treasure? Is it something like that? I think it might be, yeah. That one off. Thanks for talking everybody.
Yeah. Next question. All right, so another question. This one I would like an answer on. I don't understand this. Did you notice at the end of the movie they cut Channing Tatum's hair shorter? I did notice this.
Steve: Why makes absolutely no sense. There were a lot of continuity errors in this
Jason: movie. Was that an error?
It seemed extremely intentional. I don't really know why they would do that. It seemed like the message of the film seemed to be in part that men with long hair can't be taken seriously. Is that what they were trying to say?
Steve: I think so. I saw these behind the scene interviews, like, you know, they're not really behind the scenes anything.
They ask all these like light questions about how it was filming with everybody and he kept talking about this wig and he went on and on and on about the wig and how when he put on the wig it just had a mind of its own and how that's how he got into character. And so the wig was supposed to be a, like a really big part of the theme of the movie, I guess.
It was very
Jason: odd. Why not keep the wig the entire film? Cause he's supposed to be a Fabio clone. That's the joke. Mm-hmm. Right. So he starts off and he is got that long golden hair and it's a wig, but nobody knows it's a wig or you're not supposed to know it's a wig. And that was like a big part of what made the character visually distinct and comedic.
Mm-hmm. Right. It was funny that he had this hair. And if you imagine. He keeps that through the whole movie. And then, you know, like where he's doing all these things, action adventure and the hair's whipping around and he's saying stupid things. It's pretty funny. Slightly funnier, I guess almost to the level of funny.
And then he climbs out of the water at one stage or he goes through like a waterfall and he comes out the other end and there's no wig. Mm-hmm. The hair, suddenly you realize it's a wig and he's got like spiky hair That's actually funny. And visually there's a lot of potential for that joke. Throughout the whole film, but they dropped it early.
In the first 15, 20 minutes, he loses the wig and he just has spiked up hair. Why?
Steve: I think the wig was that it wasn't the real him, that it was a character he was playing and now he was the actual hero of the movie. Or we were supposed to feel like, oh, it's just a regular, he's just a regular guy like everybody else.
But to your point, having the wig would've made for a lot of funny moments, like especially when he's with Brad Pitt in that scene when they're trying to rescue her. I could have seen that being really silly. Like the hair's just getting in their faces and they can't fight. Correct. You know what I mean?
Like mm-hmm. Those little comic elements that could have been good, you know? Absolutely can. Or he doesn't have the wig on, but he goes and gets it cuz he notices that.
Jason: Long Yeah. Gets, gets caught on things, but nobody sees it. Yeah. He goes and gets it and he's like, what you doing? And
Steve: he's like, what do you mean?
Because he's like, that would've been good. But yeah,
Jason: they could have taken down a goon with the wig that would, that would've been good. Could have put it on When they used the sequin dress as a decoy, they could have put the wig on that. That would've been funny. So many things. It could have been used to solve a puzzle, you know, one of the riddles in the, uh, lost city.
That would've been funny. But to your point though, it does seem like intentionally or unintentionally, one of the messages is that a man can't be taken seriously. Or I guess the shorter his hair is, the more seriously he's taken. Because in the beginning he's just a total goofball. Mm-hmm. And then he loses the wig, and you're supposed to take him a little bit more seriously as a romantic lead, but not like, you're not embracing him as a fully legitimate character or person.
Uhhuh. And then in the very last scene, They buzzed his hair and gave him just like a tight buzz cut. He dropped his voice and he dropped the dumb act. A lot of it. And I think they were trying to make him like a serious, believable, romantic lead at that point. But all they did was make him look like Curious George.
Steve: Yeah. There were some really weird character shifts with him where he was kind of really stupid through the beginning of it. Then it's suddenly he's more intellectual or really understands what's going on, and he is a deeper character. They'd have these pauses where he is talking about how he grew up.
You know, I grew up with my mom and my sisters or whatever. I really wanted to make it like he gets really serious. Mm-hmm. But it seemed like he was playing a completely different
Jason: character because he changed his tone of his voice, his inflection, and mm-hmm. His cadence and everything. He made better eye contact.
His body language changed dramatically. Well, and then he'd go right back to being neurotic and goofy.
Steve: I think this is kind of interesting because this is the moment where I thought that he was actually working with the bad guys. It was such a marked shift in his character that I was like, uhoh, is there a a twist here?
Mm-hmm. Where he's been working for that guy the whole time. Cuz he had asked her for the ma like, what is that? And it was the map that she was putting in her blouse. Mm-hmm. Or in the jumpsuit. And I thought, oh, he's gonna say gimme that. And the villain was gonna show up with his henchman and he had been paid all along to act like this goofy cover model guy or whatever.
And I thought that's where the plot was gonna go. Hmm. So the whole time I was kind of, after that point, I was waiting for a twist like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like where he was supposed to be the romantic lead, but in fact he was actually just working for the bad guys the whole time. Cuz he changed
Jason: so dramatically.
I don't know if that would've made it better or a train wreck. I don't know.
Steve: I didn't really play it out that way. As I was watching it, I just thought, you know, maybe that's the case and maybe she has to just make it on her own. Mm-hmm. Which turns it into a different type of scenario. Or she meets another character somewhere in one of the towns who like picks up where he left off.
Yeah. And she realizes like what she really wants and he ends up getting killed or gets put in jail or something. The Channing Tatum character. Mm-hmm. But that would've been a totally different movie, but maybe more
Jason: interesting. Yeah, it's very different. I don't know if it's funny. Is it funny at that point?
I think it's, the problem is it's the tonal change and it stops being a comedy at that point. It gets a little too real. I think Uhhuh, but I guess it's all in how you play it. You'd have to set it up so that it was comedic, but I think it would be jarring because it's clearly supposed to be a romantic comedy.
Right. In theory,
Steve: you know, with two strong leads, right, who are gonna stay consistently throughout, like romancing the stone. What did you think about this whole idea? Like it was a very, it was a prop based movie. I thought with that, the sequin jumpsuit, it really lost it. Its whole meaning in the beginning.
I know she was supposed to be fish out of water, but it was like, come on. It's so ridiculous. And so over the top that, that's not really funny. Well, it's been
Jason: done so many times. It's the classic, I'll break off my heels. Yeah. So I can run in them
Steve: bit. And they always swim in shoes in these movies. Mm-hmm.
Like he has these really heavy boots and jumps into the water and she swims with these heels and can totally pull it off. And no one drowns and no one thinks to maybe take off their shoes before they jump in water or even your clothes. Right. Cuz you'd probably get pulled under by the weight of like really heavy clothes, but
Jason: whatever.
Uh, I have another question for you. So you may recall this from the film. It stood out to me several times what happened to her. Clearly interesting archeologist husband. They never explained it. They kept mentioning that he died. They described him as like super knowledgeable about this culture. Like he was an expert.
He seemed like an Indiana Jones type. Mm-hmm. You know, they sort of alluded to him being the adventurous one. What happened to him? I honestly wondered if he was gonna show
Steve: up. It would've been interesting if he would've shown up. Right. Why not? You think there was that twist that I was talking about? Yeah.
With Dash being in the villain. Right. And then later on she finds her husband again, or before maybe he's held captive or maybe the villains held him captive and she can't get anything out of him. Something
Jason: I, to be honest, I fully expected him to show. But what I think they might have been doing is thinking about a sequel.
I think they're thinking, okay, by the end of the first movie, then Joan Wilder and the monkey will be in love, and then in the second movie, her husband will show up and it'll be a love triangle. It'll turn out. He was actually, they'll do a little start with like a cold, open kind of flashback thing to back when she was married to him.
He'll be doing, just cliche, Indiana Jones stuff. Neo-Nazi or somebody will take him captive. Mm-hmm. Or whatever the, whoever the cultural bad guy is that day it'll look like he died or it looked like he died in a trap or eaten by a shark or whatever. Crushed by a boulder. And then fast forward to today seems like an irrelevant, you know, bit in the beginning or not really.
Part of our current story. Joan Wilder finds a new adventure for the two of them. She and the ape go on, you know, to this new adventure. And then the husband is there, right? Right. He shows up and now, oh dilemma, love triangle. And until we realize Joan Wilder isn't really in love with this guy or her, you know, her ex-husband, or he's actually the bad guy now, or never the guy she thought she was or she outgrew him, or they both end up with different people because he was rescued by a beautiful native woman and she nursed him back to health.
And you know, everybody ends up with the person they should be with, but that. Absolutely seems like the sequel that they wanna write. Otherwise, why mention him nine times and why make him sound more interesting? That's a
Steve: really good point. I wondered that the whole time. Cause I was waiting for him to show up like you just said.
And what would be the point of mentioning him really at all? Right? Like you couldn't really have this movie be, you know, the romance novelist, but she's actually brilliant. Mm-hmm. She knows this ancient language done. Mm-hmm. She doesn't need the husband. No. Right.
Jason: And also if you're trying to convey that she lost someone, I think that was the assumption we're supposed to make is it's like, oh, she had a husband and now she's single.
That's partly why she needs love and we're supposed to feel good about her being involved with an aid. I think in this case, if that had been the point, they would've shown pictures of him. Uhhuh. The only reason not to show pictures of them together, like in the beginning, have a picture of her with him on the desk and he's got the pith helmet or the Indiana Jones hat or something on, and they're together or whatever, and they're on an adventure or something.
The only reason not to show him is because you haven't cast him yet and you think you might want to
Steve: later. Oh, that's a really good point. Let me ask you this then. Do you think the director's ultimate goal is to turn this into some type of series, like a three
Jason: movie series? I think they wanted to leave it open.
Yeah. I mean, it was a big enough budget. They paid for Brad Pitt. I think we, you know, let's see if we can milk this and turn it into a franchise. I think that was the plan. You know, crank, crank, crank one out every few years. How did this movie do? I had heard it did pretty well, but when I looked it up, it looks like it was fairly me middling.
We're looking at worldwide, total shy of 200 million. So 190, which, you know, for the budget's not bad. What's the budget? 68 million. And you want to double that for advertising and marketing. It made its money back, but not buy a lot.
Steve: Interesting. I wonder if they, they will make a sequel. Why
Jason: not? You know, there were so many places they could cut budget and obviously they're gonna want to try to keep Brad Pitt.
Yeah. Even though that makes no sense. But if you choose, just drop some of the big set pieces a little bit and just have one or two more meaningful ones. And the actors don't take like a big pay raise or something and you get a relatively inexpensive director. I think you could maybe don't market it too much if you get a better script and it's funnier and there's more jokes in the trailer.
I don't know, this might be a sinking ship. It's really hard to say. Sandra Bullock is great. I mean, she's very attractive and fun and interesting, but they don't have a ton of chemistry and you're stuck with that. You can't really abandon that element. I don't know if we'll get another one, but I think that was part of the plan was to have her husband introduce the Love Triangle and the sequel.
That would be my guess.
Steve: Yeah. I'll have to take a look and see if they're planning a sequel, they might already have it in the works, or maybe that was green lit already. Yeah, entirely possible because I could, I could see it working. I mean, it's possible that it
Jason: could work for what it, if the script is better.
Yeah, if, if it's funnier. If you get a better writer, some up and coming person who's very, very funny, has written some low budget comedies and wants to stab at something that's higher budget, then they might really figure out how to bring the comedy out of this.
Steve: I mean, conceptually, there's a lot of places you could go.
Even though for all our critiques and criticisms of this particular movie, there's a lot of, I mean, it's pretty much an open book, the way you can take it. Right. If it's based on her next novel and that novel's an adventure somewhere else, you follow the characters. A maybe they're, they don't live happily after, after, you know?
Mm-hmm. But they have to reteam for this other adventure for whatever reason. You know, there's a lot of ways I could see it going. Bringing the husband back. That would be huge. I mean, you have enough material for 90 minutes for
Jason: sure. I think so. Okay. Uh, another question. How do you sneak up on someone with a dirt bike in the jungle?
Very carefully. Were they pushing them? Were they holding the handlebars and pushing the bikes through the jungle until they got close to Joan Wilder and then they hopped on and turned the engine on? I don't understand. They're not named. It was
Steve: ridiculous bikes. Yeah. They just like,
Jason: all of a sudden they were right on top of, you would hear them coming four a mile miles.
Yeah. Miles away. Minimum. It's not like they were electric bikes. Yeah. Makes sense. Sense. That was absolutely no sense what that was so unbelievably jarring and obvious. I can't imagine too many people didn't catch that. Where did
Steve: that come from? Yeah. Things just suddenly happened in that movie. There was very little buildup, there was very little backstory about the characters that make you want to care about them at all.
Mm-hmm. There's the stereotypical bad guy with his very surface level reason for getting this crown. Which spoiler alert isn't an actual crown made of emeralds or rubes. Mm-hmm. It's a, a seashell crown.
Jason: It's sort of a jewel of the Nile kind of situation. It's like a jewel of an
Steve: Nile or a romancing the stone type of scenario.
You know what I mean? It's a very cookie cutter, the way everyone's set up here. Yeah. The motivations are very whimsy at best.
Jason: Mm-hmm. You know. So let's talk about the, uh, Oscar character, the pilot. So for those of you who aren't going to watch this movie, The book agent who is on a parallel quest to try to get to where Joan Wilder and the ape are Uhhuh.
And so she is taking planes and you know, trying to get there and follow them. And she's also a fish outta water, even though she's not really in the jungle. And at one point she comes across Oscar, who's played by Oscar from the office, who also played Oscar in the office. So that actor is a cargo pilot and he agrees to fly the book agent on part of the journey.
And then he ends up tagging along because he seems to be sexually attracted to her or stalking her.
Steve: Seems to be, it was okay. He was actually quite silly, I thought, even though he wasn't in the movie
Jason: very long. It was too much at times, but couple bits of it were okay. But I got, I got a serious question for you.
Yeah. Was he supposed to be a literal angel? I didn't think about him like that at all. I think they might have meant for there to be some religious fantasy in this movie. I think there were a couple elements of that, and I think he was supposed to be a literal angel, you know, like the ark in a Covenant or Yeah, the holy grail.
I think this movie did a less refined, more, um, difficult to swallow. Version of that kind of religious fantasy that's in Indiana Jones by having actually a literal angel be helping, which is why he was there and helped get the book agent there to, to rescue them at the end so they don't die, I guess, in the water or whatever.
Oh, and I don't know if you caught it, but at the very end when they're all on the beach in Hawaii, one of the characters asked him like, oh, Oscar, are you an angel? And he stopped being goofy for a second and he said, how did you know? I
Steve: did notice that.
Jason: Yeah. But I didn't see, he dropped a smile and the ridiculous personality and said, how did you know when he
Steve: hands her a drink?
Yeah. I didn't hear what had been said before that. So I just heard him say, how did you know? Yeah. And what I thought she meant was, how did you know that I wanted this drink? But I didn't hear the angel
Jason: part. No, he said that. No, I'm saying, she said, oh, Oscar, you're an angel. He stopped smiling, his face went totally serious.
Oh, I understand. Which is the first time that character ever did that. Yeah. So very strange. Right, but, well, I thought
Steve: his reaction was to the drink. I thought she had asked him something about the drink itself. I didn't hear that You're an angel
Jason: portion. Well, the reason I asked him part as well is the post credit scene.
I almost missed it. It came on fast enough that I happened to catch it. The post credit scene has Joan Wilder and the monkey in like a yoga class, Uhhuh, and they're sitting with their legs crossed and they're, you know, talking about spiritual stuff and their breathing and relaxing. And presumably this is in Hawaii as part of the resort they were at.
And the previous scene and behind them is Jack Trainor. And he's sitting there in the yoga class and they're like, what? You're alive. Yeah. You know, humans only use 10% of their brain. So after I got shot, I just started using a different 10% of my brain, and here I am. That's kind of funny. So I, I thought he's a ghost or a spirit, like he's not really gonna be there.
But at no point did they give any indication that they are the only ones who could see him or things pass through him. He, it seemed weird, like he's just now back. He's just part of the cast again. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So again, to me that only makes sense within the rules of the film if it's a kind of a religious fantasy element, right?
Either he and Oscar are angels or, you know, God's at work or some sort of spiritual force at work. Brought him back to life, brought Jack back to life. It's really interesting. I
Steve: didn't think about this aspect of this movie at all. I took everything very literally,
Jason: you know? And why would you, why would you think about this at all?
Because it's certainly not a clear part of the film. In no way is it similar to Indiana Jones?
Steve: No, not at all. Or Romancing the Stone. Yes. It really is just a copy of Romancing the Stone. Yeah, right. Just a, a poorer version of that,
Jason: that classic movie. Absolutely. Let's get into that. Right. So obviously Romancing the Stone, but in addition to that, there are a bunch of other movies that did this movie better.
So obviously Romancing The Stone 1984 film directed by Robert kus. Great film, Danny DeVito. Amazing, hilarious Michael Douglas. Really good in that. Kathleen Turner. What parts of Lost City did Romancing the Stone do better? All of it. 180 minutes. This is just, uh, an inferior version of that film. And, and that movie's dated to some extent now.
So I think that's the argument for an update Uhhuh. But, uh, there were a lot of Indiana Jones elements they were playing off of. But that's not a fair criticism because romancing the stone was obviously, what if Indiana Jones was romantic comedy uhhuh, so they're just playing off the same formula. That's not really a fair comparison, but when you have things like puzzles and ancient languages and you know, riddles and traps and stuff like that, you're absolutely gonna draw a comparison to Indiana Jones.
And it's not a super high bar, at least for those elements. But this movie, I felt like they didn't even take a swing. No. Had a lot of that stuff. No.
Steve: They grabbed the elements and just kind of threw them in there.
Jason: It was exposition. They just made it exposition. Yeah. It wasn't even like pictures on a wall, it was just some scribbles on a parchment and a lot of talking, a lot of like, well, this means this and these people felt this way and the true treasure is blah, blah, blah.
And, and you're like, could you show some of this? You know, could you gimme some sort of visual element to it? But no. Any other films that this movie reminded you of or that you thought did Elements of what this movie tried to do, but did it better? There's
Steve: those goofy movies. There was that one with The Rock where he is being chased
Jason: through.
You're talking about 2003 is the Rundown Run Down and I a hundred percent agree, run a hundred percent Wacky Fish Outta Water, jungle Adventure. A hundred percent Rundown. Did that better?
Steve: There's the, um, the Deadliest game, I think, where it's like there're people, hunters that are chasing people through the mm-hmm.
I mean, even a predator. Isn't it as a non comedic version of this movie, right. Fish outta Water in a way. Those soldiers, right. An unknown jungle. Mm-hmm. Getting chased down by the Predator. And I think this is such a common movie trope. You know, the whole idea of a fish out of water scenario in a jungle setting.
Jason: Well, you mentioned another one. Stand by Me. 1986. Mm. Yeah, the leeches scene. Thought it better. Yeah. Way better. Already. Already done. I thought of, uh, stranger than fiction. The 2006 Will Ferrell Emmett Thompson movie because it kept coming to mind. The successful writer who's lost faith in herself. Emma Thompson did that so much better.
The, uh, black Woman Support Network. Remember Queen Latifa? In that movie she killed in that role, like she came in to help m Emma Thompson work on her novel. So much better.
Steve: Yeah. I think this movie really fails in a lot of ways because you don't really have that feeling that you know these characters and you understand their motivation, or there's something that's really, really driving the plot forward.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There's only just like save themselves. The bad guys are just bad. Even when you go back to a Daniel Radcliffe's character, you would think that even in those scenes, he just doesn't have to just continuously be like the generic bad guy. There could be something else that's kind of driving his motivation for getting this crown, but they don't really get to the bottom of it.
He's just a spoiled, rich kid. Who's jealous of his brother, like he mentioned. And that's something that kind of flew over my head cuz it was really just a toss away line
Jason: about well, and it's, it's not adequate motivation. It doesn't really fully explain or make sense, like he's got an inadequacy. That's driving him to extremes, but he's supposed to be a bad guy and he just seems like you're annoying kid, brother.
He's so non-threatening.
Steve: That's why movies, let's say like Back to the Future, another Robbers Inus movie, they're so brilliant. Mm-hmm. Because even though the plot is pretty straightforward, what needs to happen, how he needs to get back to his time, there's so much nuance to it. And the motivations are so strong for each character and how, you know, what's gonna happen to Doc, how, uh, Michael J.
Fox knows what's gonna end up happening to Doc and how the future is gonna be so different if he doesn't change it in that moment. There's really like a drive for him to make everything go in a certain way. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You really know that and you feel it and you're, you know, rooting for the character.
What these types of movies are so superficial, there's just throw these characters in there. You kind of know a little bit about each one and we'll throw 'em in a jungle setting, have a bad guy chase 'em until the end, which is predictable from the beginning. Who's gonna come out on ahead? There's no real twists in this movie of any kind.
Like I mentioned, that would've been interesting with Dash, you know, maybe he was a villain or they find a husband. Like you had mentioned, that would've been really interesting cuz it just kind of drives the plot in a different direction. Even though they're still going for the same final, they all have the same motive.
Mm-hmm. It doesn't change that, but it changes the elements around it. It just freshens things up a little bit. Just doesn't move in a linear plot.
Jason: Yeah. Well, talking about character, It really stood out to me in this film that, I mean, everything you said about how to improve character or pointing out problems with character, I think are absolutely true.
But one of the things that occurred to me, and I think was perhaps a fundamental, serious problem with the fabric, with the, you know, the design, the AutoCAD of, of this particular film from the start is that you have two major characters. They're supposed to have romantic tension, will they, won't they, that kind of thing.
But they're both neurotic and having two neurotic characters going, Ooh, spider ooh. Or sort of taking turns here and there being slightly more comfortable like, oh, I, you know, I'm prepared for this, or I can handle it. Don't be silly. I'll handle the leeches. Right. They kind of traded that role. Yeah. Where one minute they were both neurotic and fish outta water, and the next minute one of them was sort of oriented uhhuh, and instead of it feeling like a compatible couple, That compensated for each other's weaknesses in this environment.
It felt like two people who have absolutely no business surviving 10 hours. Mm-hmm. In the jungle. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, it was very off-putting. If you knew a couple like that, you would think, oh boy, I hope they stay in their comfort zone. Because the minute they get out of it, like they're gonna just absolutely melt down because neither one of 'em has even a, an emotional skillset.
Right. That will help through this. Let own survival skills for a jungle. Right? Yeah. I just don't think audience members, and I don't wanna speak for everybody, but just the general concept of an audience member. I don't think audiences as an an amorphous, metaphorical thing respond positively to two neurotic characters, uhhuh in a action adventure, romantic comedy.
I think it's too weak to have for a cornerstone of the film to be too neurotic Characters both being neurotic repeatedly. It's not sexy, it's not funny. It's, it's just too much
Steve: to that point, I think for any type of buddy comedy. Or Buddy film. There has to be that juxtaposition between the two characters, like something like playing trains and automobiles.
Let's talk about two similar characters,
Jason: right? 21 Jump Street, the 2012 movie in that one. I think that movie did a better job of chanting Tatum, playing dumb to be funny. He really funny in that. Yeah, he was. And I think you could say, oh, it's chemistry with Jonah Hill or whatever. But I think it's design of the characters more than chemistry.
Uh, I think in that one, chaining Tatum was dumb. The character was dumb, but relatively gung-ho or brave. And he had moments of being like, I don't know, I don't know. And they both were sort of neurotic briefly, but there were so many ways in which they were very different. They could play off of each other.
And it was funny. And every time they agreed it was like relieving tension in a pleasant way. Mm-hmm. Like they've aligned again. That's great. Cuz there was always that kind of push pull and different ways of looking at things. Uhhuh, this movie, you have two neurotic characters who both drink wine and wear expensive clothing and have nice lifestyles and good skin and would never be caught dead in the jungle.
And where is the entertainment in that? Right. If it was a horror movie and they both got killed, sure. You know, that's somewhat entertaining. But I don't think it's romantic. I don't think it's comedic. I think it can be. But if you're gonna do that, the characters have to be extremely different and other ways.
And you're better off just putting them in a city environment where the neuroticism doesn't stand out so much.
Steve: Yeah. Those similarities between characters in a setting like that, it really doesn't work. That's a really good point. I was like, nothing's working here. Right. But really what it comes down to is they're too similar, like two sides of the same,
Jason: same color, and in very specific ways.
Mm-hmm. Very specific way. And in again, similarities are good as long as you have some really key differences. And if you go back to romancing the stone, Michael Douglas shows up, he comes out of the jungle, he is got the shotgun, and he's everything. That Kathleen Turner isn't. Mm-hmm. Right. But then as the movie goes on, you discover they have some playful characteristics in common and they both kind of bicker and it's very amusing.
They're clearly not opposites. Mm-hmm. But initially, and in terms of neuroticism and comfort in the jungle and all that kind of stuff, they are, they're not both fish outta water. It makes for
Steve: a very believable ending. That they could end up together. Yeah. Right. Cause they're not so different. And there's that evolution of their
Jason: relationship.
It's the classic formula where if you've never seen one of these movies before, when they meet, your thought is, oh, they're gonna hate each other. Mm-hmm. And then as you watch the film, you're like, oh no, actually they have a lot in common. That's cool. Oh, it's so great. They're together. I was rooting for that.
So this movie had zero of that zero. It's not like her ex-husband were told, never really cared for her, and she had to be in the caretaking role. Uhhuh. And so now the fact that, yeah, they're both neurotic, but Channing Tatum is a caretaker, Uhhuh, and he has a lot of respect for women. And so, oh, that's what she needs and we're kind of rooting for her to get it.
They almost went there. Or maybe they think they did, but they almost got there a couple times and then she started taking care of him. And I was like, wow, they're just swapping rolls. Yeah. In multiple ways. Over and over. And I'm sure they're like, well, that's a modern relationship, but it's not funny. Not at all.
No.
Steve: And I, I shouldn't be thinking at one point in the movie that he might be a bad guy. Right. You know what I mean?
Jason: If they don't want, cause your brain, brain, your brain shouldn't be trying to make this better. Yeah. We shouldn't be trying to turn this into a funny comedy movie. I shouldn't have been sitting there thinking about where's her husband?
Where's her husband? Why do they keep mentioning him? But they did. I mean, but I did. And they could
Steve: have added some comedic elements with those henchmen that seemed to be such a prominent part of the whole movie. They were all interchangeable.
Jason: No, they were setting it up too with that one who was like a local.
Oh yeah. And then what? It didn't even matter at the end. He's like, I'm just gonna take the boat. But how is that a blow against the white colonists? Yeah. You know, he just took his boat. He took his
Steve: boat and left them a uh, crow crowbar. He tried to
Jason: kill people the whole time. He didn't make one comment about not killing people.
That's it. If you're a henchman and you've watched multiple people die and you're gonna kill one person, would it not be Harry Potter? Right. I just don't understand. It's missed opportunity after this
Steve: opport. No, absolutely. Even though I did think that Daniel Radcliffe was, he is a very good actor, and I think if he was given more to do or more background or something to act against or someone to act against, I think it would've been much more interesting.
Instead of just being this one dimensional villain, did he have a
Jason: full dimension? He was no. I mean was he was, he was like half of one dimension and that dimension was spoiled Rich. Greedy rich. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Insecure and spoiled. There wasn't even the rest of that dimension present. How do you get villain outta that?
That's a, that character that I just described that he played is a villain. In a film about taking over the family business, Uhhuh, you know, or about a, a woman who marries a man who's wealthy and she thinks her life's gonna be amazing. Maybe he qualifies as a lifetime villain under those circumstances, but even then, he'd have to like sleep around or do more than Harry Potter did in this film.
I've seen a few films with him in them. I don't know if I can comment on his acting ability, but he certainly has not found the roles to really let him stretch out that I've seen. I saw Guns Akimbo, and I definitely think he was doing something different there, and he was much better in that than he is in this.
I think it was just an attempt to get the millennials to come see the film. It's a pretty
Steve: flat script overall. Well, with least some moments that I thought could have, could have gone somewhere. I think having more Brad Pitt would've been funny.
Jason: Yeah, but that's the thing, right? You can't rely on stunt casting to fix your movie.
If anything, honestly. As much as I loved him in this film, I thought he was great. I really did enjoy his performance and the scenes he was in. I thought he played it very well, and it also fits his Hollywood persona of being uhhuh. Sort of like not that worked up about this. Yeah, I'm just in this film. So I liked all of that.
But for stunt casting, he should have been in it less. The fact that he was in it so much and they brought him back in the post credits, I think is so, it really threw you off Well, no, no. I think it's great. It's just commentary on how weak the rest of the film is, right? You shouldn't need him that much, which they did.
They really needed him. He needs to be on the post for a variety of reasons, not just to put people in the seats, but because his scenes were the better scenes. He had better chemistry with the monkey than Sandra Bullock did. There's so many parts where the movie benefited from his presence too much. You may as well make him the central character.
Yeah. So, you know, again, I can't argue against putting him in the film more. I'm just saying there were a lot of things about this movie that made it tepid and flavorless, and I don't think it was really the actor's fault. So then stunt casting needs to be, you need to extend it and extend it. Extend it, because it's one of the few things that works in this
Steve: case.
Yeah. If everyone would've been on the same level, this would've been the type of movie where the script was really strong, the characters were really strong. Then you throw someone like that in there, he just becomes part of it. Mm-hmm. A movie like Snatch or any one of those ensemble comedies, right? I'm thinking like, mm-hmm.
The Gentleman or whatever, where everyone's so unique, such a good character. Then it's just one person doesn't steal the show and then leave you to wonder, Hey, where did that guy go? Oh, he's not coming back. That sucks. Now you gotta deal with these other characters that are so much more flat
Jason: than that character you knew he wasn't going to survive.
For very long because they weren't obviously riding him out. He wasn't like, I gotta catch a helicopter outta here, but you've got me for 15 minutes. So the only way he's gonna exit in a movie like that is if he dies. He's not on the poster. He's a bigger actor than both of 'em, so he bigger name. Anyway, so his name would've been at the top of the Billy.
Maybe I am spend too much time thinking about movies. Other people were surprised when he was killed and they tried to play it for laughs, which in a clearly family friendly PG 12 film like this splattering someone with blood and having that go on and on like, uh, yeah. Okay, sure. Mm-hmm. You know, sure if that's what you got.
But this just that the kind of humor wasn't this film? No, not at all. That was a little too risque in a way. I guess that and what the naked Leach scene, I guess, were the two attempts to make it more
Steve: adult if he would've shown up in a helicopter. And then left in a helicopter and he was like, Hey, where are you going?
He, he is like, I gotta go. And he's like, what about us? Another rescue? Yeah. What, what about us? He's like, no, there's only one seat on the chopper or something.
Jason: See later you guys got it and like dropped a bag, you know from that would've been really funny. Maybe should, should write the sequel. I think it could be better.
So
Steve: we could take maybe a, a weekend
Jason: and write the whole thing,
Steve: start to finish and start casting
Jason: by next week we'll just find a Curious George script and rework it in a couple hours. That's all I have to say about this movie. If you liked it, that's great. Good on you. These are kind of movies that are meant to be enjoyed.
Some people can turn their brain off and really get a lot out of a film like this and that's awesome. That's great. It's like watching golf. You can kind of take a nap and relax and you know, maybe there were some things in this movie that just make you laugh that you just think are funny or you just really love one of the actors.
And if that's the case, enjoy, you know, by all means, you know, buy it on DVD or whatever, or
Steve: vhs. Yeah, that's all I have too.
Jason: Let me ask you. Yeah. Also, again, in the, on the subject of this film, but I think we're kind of done talking about this film. What would you do with this ip? Like if you were, if they were like, Hey, you know, we're kind of done with Lost City and uh, let's throw it to the new guy in the department, junior Gopher, Steve.
Can you give us a pitch on this? Where would you go with this intellectual property?
Steve: I think I would bring the husband back. I think that
Jason: would be a, so you'd make a sequel, you'd make a film sequel? I would.
Steve: Even though I think the characters are very flat. I think maybe if you took the sequel and took the time to maybe have like some type of backstory around each character.
Maybe do some type of flashback, how she got into the, the romance novel genre, the husband, maybe it could be salvageable cuz then you'd establish that strongly like the backstory of the main characters and maybe from there you'd really care about them moving forward and put them into a new adventure.
I think that's really what's lacking in the movie, besides the fact that they're both. Neurotic. But if you were gonna save it, I think that would be the only way to save it. You need to know more about them. I think in order to kind of have you hook into one of them is like, oh, this is who I'm rooting for.
That's really what's missing with this. There's room for a new adventure. I don't think that's the issue. There's a, a new plot. A new adventure, a new new, something that they can go on. I don't know. I would strap it completely like I, I would say, yeah, yeah. There's really nothing here. But you still have the problem that we were talking about, that they're both neurotic and that's, that's an
Jason: issue.
Well, so to your point, no, but I think you were fixing that. Right? So trying, let's say, you know, the sequel picks up, it's later. Um, Jones's been working on her new novel inspired by the real adventure and she's cranking in away or whatever, whatever random thing she's writing. Right. And the monkey went to like survivalist school or he decided he was gonna get like an education.
Oh, I like that. Worthy of her. Yeah. Yeah. And so he like goes to study history, but he realizes he can't. Learn that stuff. He's never gonna get the hang of it. So he goes to Survival School, he's on like a reality survival show, and so you can still have him be bumbling and comedic, but actually give him, like, toughen him up and give him some actual skills.
Uhhuh so that he thinks he's kind of a Michael Douglass in Romancing the Stone character, but he's really not. Uh, but he's not neurotic anymore and he's still kind of delusional and he is, you know, driven by optimism, but he actually has built some skill and some toughness so that he thinks he's ready for the jungle, he feels prepared, or whatever adventure they go on, he thinks he's gonna be ready for that environment, which makes it kind of funnier, especially if she's trying to look out for him and sort of protect him from himself and filling in the gaps in his actual ability.
Then you have two people who rely on each other and are a good fit in a lot of ways, but they're not both like, oh my God, that leaf touched me every five minutes. You know? Yeah. So I think that to your point, you can develop them in between. Or you know, in the beginning and then fix the dynamic. If you
Steve: did fix the dynamic and you had him like be a more of a strong adventure, like he's a survivalist now and maybe she's picked up a completely different skillset or a skillset that happens to work in a new environment.
Mm-hmm. That would be kind of funny. The ancient languages thing is her skillset in this one and that she's, you know, brilliant, but writing romance novels, I wonder what she could be doing in the meantime that would happen to be really useful for this new adventure. Mm-hmm. I don't know what the answer to that would be, but it would be kind of interesting to see that dynamic.
Like he picks up these new skills. She does too, but you don't realize that until later on in the movie. You just kinda, maybe you feel like, oh, these are the same two neurotic characters, but all of a sudden he has like, wait a minute, how did he do that? And then you figure out like, oh yeah, he, you didn't see me on that.
You know, like Survivor 27 that I won. You know, I, I wouldn't had to do X, Y, Z. That would be kind of funny. But the reveals would have to be not so obvious and not so quick. So you think you're watching a similar movie in the beginning, but it takes a turn
Jason: that's a little risky because it didn't do that well.
So you might need to hit the audience right up front with interesting changes to the character to get them to come in and be like, oh no, that could be good. That looks funny. It would make the trailer funny. I get that from a pure enjoyment standpoint, it would be better if it, if you thought this was the same old boring thing and then, oh no, it's actually quite good.
Right. But I don't think word of mouth on a sequel is gonna save this franchise. I think you gotta come right outta the gates with everything that you can think of that makes this a better movie. Then you start with whatever they had, whatever positivity they were able to garner, which is two minutes from us.
I think about that. Yeah. Um, and then you just come out, right? Well this is what we added. This is why it's funnier. There's actually hilarious jokes in the trailer. I think you need that. Or else the sequel dies before.
Steve: Before it's born. Yeah, that's a good point. Cuz people are gonna be referencing the other movie and thinking to themselves, oh yeah, this is really the same movie.
That's not
Jason: very good. Right. Anyone who goes back to watch this movie for the first time to decide if they wanna watch a sequel, need to know in the trailer for the sequel why it's better than this move. I
Steve: hadn't thought of the trailer. I was just thinking about it in terms of just the movie, like you just go in there, you're
Jason: watching the movie.
Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a good point. From a entertainment standpoint, yeah, absolutely. That's a much better film if it's surprising and interesting and all that. But I think you have to, well, you or I or we would have to bring those surprising elements in different ways. Anything we can think of to make it more obviously funny.
Mm-hmm. And appealing and romantic. We've gotta put that. If the dead husband is in it, he's in the trailer, you know? Yeah, that's a good point. We gotta do all of that. Whatever the treasure is, has gotta be in the trailer. Everything. We've got a lot of work to do is what you're saying. They're in the trailer, right.
If they're dodging poison darts, they're in the trailer. You know what I mean? The answers to those puzzles
Steve: are in the trailer. Yeah. You start, start is
Jason: writing in the trailer. You write a trailer first. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because otherwise, what are you gonna get? You're gonna get nine Housewives who think it's funny because she's a romance novelist
Steve: or whatever.
Mm-hmm. It's quite a challenge. With a sequel to make it much better than the original, make enough changes to it that it doesn't feel so unfamiliar to the audience. Mm-hmm. But also fresh enough that you're like, okay, I'm gonna give this a shot.
Jason: Oh, that actually looks funny, you think? And I like Sandra Bullock.
Oh, Brad Pitts in this one. Oh, was he in the last one? I don't know. I'll go watch it. Oh, wow. That wasn't great. But it looks like Brad Pitt's in the sequel a lot more, and Oh, it looks like they've got kind of a funny dynamic. And there were some funny jokes. I'll see the sequel not right, like you've gotta win people back or make it look like it's a total reboot.
I don't,
Steve: yeah, maybe new actors, new director, new writer, same title. Maybe it'll just be, uh, the Lost City Plus
Jason: with additional Lost City content. Yeah, with
Steve: extra bonus
Jason: content. More monkeys and the director's commentary. So when I, when I thought about what I would do with this, what came to my mind after just after finishing it is I would do like a cartoon or like a live action kids show, and I would have the same main characters, but I would age them down to like 13 or 14 because I think it's funny.
When you do like a Disney Kid show and every week it's a different lost city, you know? And you just have this repeated kind of cute romantic tension between tweens. There's probably a, a quicker way to say that tweens. And they go on these really light adventures with not a lot of actual history or archeology, which is absolutely this film.
Right? So you just do that and it's a series of made for tv, low budget movies on Disney or whatever, you know what I mean? I like the
Steve: idea. Cause you could really set up a formula, right? Like a 30 minute episode. Mm-hmm. Or whatever this setup, right. What that lost city or a lost place or the mystery. It could be on the seas, it could be in jungle environment, desert environment, right.
City environment.
Jason: Yeah. That would be interesting. Yeah. And every week the 13 year old girl is riding another. She's doing another video on her YouTube channel or writing another short book or something. And so she's been researching this thing and this week it's Egypt, and next week it's, uh, Thailand, and next week it's Antarctica or whatever.
Right. And they're just going together. And her dumb handsome friend is, you know, always going with her and trying to like, and there's a little bit of flirty tension, but they actually gradually develop into the tween equivalent, you know, or the teenager equivalent of a romance. But it, you can give it time because it's so many episodes.
Mm-hmm. I think that's better. It's lighthearted, it's cute, it's fun. And that's about how deep this film goes. But I think that's a good idea.
Steve: It gives you a lot to work with
Jason: as a series. Yeah. And you don't need to do a big budget, you know what I mean? You can just do sets on stages and mm-hmm. You can do some Nickelodeon level puzzles for them to solve, or it's a cartoon.
Or just a cartoon, right? Yeah, absolutely. It just doesn't need to be expensive. It doesn't need to be hard. Just very formulaic, very along the surface, recurring villain. If you want, you know who's even younger than they are, and that's funny. I guess Uhhuh, but has
Steve: a beard
Jason: like in this one. Yeah, exactly. Or whatever the 12 year old equivalent of that would be.
Like a suit. He wears a suit. He wears a suit.
Steve: Yeah, for sure. Something like that. A bow tie is a cane in a
Jason: monocle's. It's well drawn with a cane. He's like Mr.
Steve: Peanut, but he is 12 years old and
Jason: human. That's pretty funny. All right, well good. That was another episode. I think we did it next time. Dead heat, next time.
Most likely dead heat. Thanks a lot for listening. Remember, stay away from writing a review. No liking, no subscribing. Don't encourage us.