Viewers of a certain age will immediately think of “Indiana Jones” while watching the new Sandra Bullock comedy, “The Lost City.” It opens with Bullock and a Fabio-esque Channing Tatum held captive by a maniacal Indy-ish knockoff, engaging in pillow talk as snakes encroach from all sides.

“To hear people laughing and to be able to laugh at people that I worked with, that feels good,” Sandra Bullock told Spectrum News 1 the day after the film’s premiere at SXSW. Bullock, who lives in Austin, and co-star Daniel Radcliffe were both in the audience. “We hadn’t seen it in a movie theater with the score, with all the visual effects done. This was our first time for everyone: the directors, all of us.”

Judging from the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction, “The Lost City,” premiering in theaters this Saturday, is likely to be a hit. Bullock plays novelist Loretta Sage, who has lost her mojo for writing romance adventure novels and is a recluse since losing her archaeologist husband. Despite the best efforts of her publicist, her books’ cover model (played by Tatum) has become the most popular character with her fans.

But when she is chloroformed and kidnapped by an eccentric treasure hunter (played by Radcliffe) seeking to exploit her arcane archaeological knowledge to find the elusive Crown of Fire on a tropical island, she unwittingly becomes the heroine of what eventually becomes her next novel.

“We’re always sort of the girlfriend or the object of desire,” Bullock said of most action-adventure films. “I’d rather be the male role. You envy them as a woman.”

Bullock said she wasn’t especially interested in the project the first time she read the script, but she changed her mind when Paramount Pictures gave her carte blanche as one of the film’s producers. At that point, she said, “you see it for what you think it should be versus them already having a set idea going in that it’s this kind of film.”

“The Lost City” is an original screenplay. It is not a sequel. It is not based on a book or other pre-existing intellectual property.

“There’s no comp for this,” said Bullock, adding that she hopes the film will be a yardstick for movies that follow. “Hopefully we pulled it off, and now hopefully we’ll get the ball rolling on more of this so it’s equal for everyone who’s in it.”

The film’s casting, as a whole, is as pitch perfect as it is diverse, from Tatum playing a lovable, lovestruck meat head and Brad Pitt as a swashbuckling mercenary to SNL’s Bowen Yang as a snarky TV host and “The Office” alum Oscar Nunez playing a helpful islander. Rounding out the cast are trans actress Patti Harrison as a bumbling social media professional and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Bullock’s exasperated but devoted publicist.

The movie is a nostalgic throwback not only to "Indiana Jones" but another hugely popular adventure comedy of the ‘80s — “Romancing the Stone” — with a soundtrack that also seems designed to appeal to audiences from that era. Spandau Ballet’s “True,” Pat Benatar’s “Shadow of the Night,” and Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina” are all played to hilarious effect.

“I came to Indiana Jones incredibly late,” Daniel Radcliffe, 32, told Spectrum News 1, to which Bullock, 57, deadpanned, “I did too.”

Best known for playing Harry Potter in the long-running film franchise, Radcliffe only watched the “Indiana Jones” movies at the urging of his girlfriend.

“They’re amazing,” he said. “It also reminds me of ‘The Mummy,’ which is one of my favorite action adventure comedy romantic things. I love these those movies, and it’s very, very fun to be in one.”

Radcliffe plays his sinister, comedic part with aplomb, starting as an in-charge fellow in a pristine three-piece suit only to completely lose his cool as his nefarious plan falls apart and he’s abandoned on the very island he was hoping to pillage.

While Radcliffe is best known for playing JK Rowling’s boy wizard, his role in “The Lost City” is a preview of the comedic chops he’ll be displaying in the upcoming Al Yankovic documentary, “Weird.”

Bullock, of course, is well known for comedy, even if that’s taken a backseat in recent years as she’s focused on dramatic roles in films like “Gravity,” “The Blind Side” and “Bird Box.” “The Lost City” is a return, in some ways, to her “Miss Congeniality” days.

For most of the movie, Bullock wears a hot pink sequined jumpsuit that “is part of me now,” Bullock told the audience after its premiere. “It’s still embedded in body parts. I will have it with me for the rest of my life.”