Critic Reviews

• Tom Huddlestone, Time Out

  'The Lost City' is intriguing as a historical document and adequate as cinema, but it has a blandness at its core that no amount of spicy mambo and booty-quaking dance routines can disguise.

• Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter

  When it succeeds, the film conveys a bittersweet longing for a lost moment and the unfulfilled promise of a democratic Cuba.

• Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle

  It's handsome and heartfelt but mired in murky politics, plot inertia, musical montages and painfully pointed symbolism.

• David Germain, Associated Press

  Garcia needed better guiding hands and eyes in the editing room to jettison the many parts that bog down the story.

• Bill Muller, Arizona Republic

  Unsteady but often entrancing.

• Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  Somehow simultaneously too much and not enough. At 143 minutes, it well overstays its welcome as a movie, but with a little more fleshing out it might have worked as a miniseries.

• Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film

  By the half way point I was beginning to take back everything I said re Steven Soderbergh's dull-as-ditchwater Che: Part II - even he manages to drum up more tension than this.

• Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

  Unfolds like a series of as outtakes from Hollywood productions

• Stella Papamichael, Film4

  There may be a good film here, but it struggles to break free of the cumbersome framework.

• James Christopher, Times [UK]

  Andy Garcia's preposterous vanity project The Lost City is an all-singing, all-dancing version of the Cuban Revolution.

• Cath Clarke, Guardian [UK]

  The script is scrupulously even-handed, but Garcia can't seem to get a grip on this sprawl.

• David Gritten, Daily Telegraph

  Great music and costumes, but with a woeful plot and jaw-droppingly stilted dialogue. Cuban-born Garcia's main complaint against Fidel seems to be that rich, corrupt Cubans could no longer dance the night away.

• Rob Daniel, Sky Movies

  Not an embarrassment, but definitely a missed opportunity.

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  Andy Garcia's directorial debut is a flawed and overlong but nonetheless watchable drama with strong performances, a superb soundtrack and bizarre appearances from Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray.

• Christopher Campbell, Cinematical

  Garcia obviously has more ambition than skill.

• Eric Monder, Film Journal International

  Garcia is just too earnest to make his dream project anything but deadly dull.

• Scott Weinberg, DVD Clinic

  It's by no means a flawless film, but it's a meaty one, and if you're a big fan of Andy Garcia, I'd definitely recommend it. (Plus, Bill Murray's in there.)

• Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

  ...plays like a confusing and inferior Caribbean analog to The Godfather, without anything like the narrative drive of Coppola's film.

• Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City

  While the soundtrack of Cuban dance music is superb, this historical drama is leaden and simply too long-winded for its own good.

• Brian Gibson, Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Canada)

  Shapeless stories that drift away from the revolution, puffed up by a biased take on 1959 Cuba with the hot air of romance.

Read all 24 critic reviews