As romance novelist Loretta Sage in "The Lost City," Sandra Bullock gets to crack wise, do physical comedy (tied to a chair in one scene, getting into a hammock in another) and debate not just the colloquialism of "here" for "catch," but also read logographics and spout Latin. And she does most of this wearing a body-hugging glittery purple onesie. In other words, in her genial new film, Bullock returns to the rom-com genre that helped make her a star. (This is not to say that she should only stick to comedy; she deserved the awards she received for "The Blind Side" and "Gravity," even if she tried — and suffered — nobly in "The Unforgivable.")
Bullock is paired here with Channing Tatum as Alan, a hunky cover model who provides visual inspiration for Loretta's novel character Dash. Alan is a sweet, dim bulb who wants to be Dash, and Tatum's entrance at a book event where he performs a "Magic Mike" routine is amusing. But to Loretta, Alan is annoying. While she is still recovering from losing her archaeologist husband and is blocked as a writer, she is even more dispirited that her fans show up to see Alan take his shirt off — or what is worse, to ask Loretta to take Alan's shirt off. Moreover, her publisher, Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), is unhappy that Loretta plans to kill off Dash and stop writing.
