You don’t need great cinema to have a good time at the movies, and Paramount’s latest release, “The Lost City,” is a demonstration of just that.

With echoes of the 1984 action-romance film “Romancing the Stone,” “The Lost City” may not be the most original, but it plays with the unoriginality, using it in its favor.

Sandra Bullock stars as reclusive best-selling romance novelist Loretta Sage, who uses her knowledge of history to create action-filled stories featuring an adventuring archeologist, Angela (also played by Bullock), and her long-locked Fabio-esque partner, Dash (Channing Tatum). After the death of her actual archeologist husband, Loretta feels afraid to move on and to finish her latest novel, and she’s fed up with the genre as a whole.

While she’s on book tour, her agent Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) schedules every appearance alongside the novel’s cover model, Alan (Tatum) who is a quintessentially clueless pretty boy and quickly steals all attention of the gaggle of ladies in attendance (who become ravenous when they see him). Fed up with all of it, she announces she’s ending the series and walks out on a panel.

Before she gets too far though, she’s kidnapped by spoiled, rich kid Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe). Fairfax “hires” Loretta to translate a scrap of text found in the Lost City of D in the mid-Atlantic — coincidentally, the place and legend she based her recent novel upon. Turns out Fairfax has found the city and, expecting riches, now wants to find the tomb of its famous ruler, which is where Loretta and the text come in.

When Alan finds out she’s been taken, he decides to try and get her back, even though he has no skills to do so other than his unyielding optimism and unwavering support of Loretta and her work.

Is there action? Check. Is there comedy? Check. Moments where you may start crying from laughing? Check (if you’re into jokes that have several improvised punchlines that build on one another, that is). Is there romantic tension between the two leads? Check. Does it have beautiful people and scenery to look at? Check. A fun A-list cameo? Check.

“The Lost City” checks most boxes needed for this kind of fun romp through the romantic-adventure genre, circling tropes and highlighting the charisma of the two leads to make it an enjoyable, though slightly forgettable, use of two hours.

Bullock has always been great in romantic comedies, so it’s wonderful to see her return to the genre as a woman who closed in on herself and decided to close everyone else out. In Loretta, we get the confident, smart woman who can take care of herself when she needs to. As for Tatum, his brawny himbo takes care to remind Loretta, and the audience, that all he’s ever wanted — besides the cover model job — is to make sure the author is safe. No ulterior motives. He dotes on her, giving puppy dog eyes when he needs to and helping her overcome an obstacle by gentle reassurance. You love to see it.

Radcliffe, too, is a fun, overzealous baddie and plays the character’s spoiled, youthful demands well.

While the script does lean into the formula, it does slightly better than if it had just regurgitated “Romancing the Stone” or other romantic adventure movies of yore. Instead, it uses all the tropes and checkboxes in its favor, playing into them and bending them to fit their original story rather than the Mad Libs approach. With a story by Seth Gordon and a screenplay by Oren Uziel, Dana Fox, Adam Nee and Aaron Nee (the latter two also directed), “The Lost City” does deliver on most of its laughs and all of its adventure.

The one thing that pleased me the most, though, is how much of the film was actually shot on location. It feels like such a rarity for a major movie like this to utilize actual jungle forests, rivers and waterfalls (in this case courtesy of the Dominican Republic) that seeing the real thing feels like a lovely throwback.

“The Lost City” is just about what you’d expect — a silly and stupidly fun comedy that will put a grin on your face, and an excuse to leave your house for a couple of hours on a Friday night again.

Out this week: “Morbius” finally flies onto screens after several delays (look for my review in next week’s GO!). Chris Pine and Ben Foster reunite as private contractors in a covert overseas mission in “The Contractor.” On Netflix, director Richard Linklater takes on animated rotoscoping in “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” a coming-of-age story set in Houston in the summer of ’69, and the streaming site premieres “The Bubble,” its meta-movie about a film being shot during a pandemic.

“The Lost City”

102 minutes

Rated PG-13 for violence and some bloody images, suggestive materials, partial nudity and language

3 stars