Romancing the Stone (1984)

This film does make you realise just how good Harrison Ford was in "Indiana Jones" (also 1984) and how good Danny DeVito is in this - but as far as Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner go, well they are really pretty mediocre. He is "Jack", the dashing rogue who ends out helping slushy fiction writer "Joan" through the Colombian jungle in search of her kidnapped sister - something about a treasure map. This adventure takes for ever to get going, but once it does it offers us a colourful and entertaining enough series of set-piece escapades with a beat-heavy synthesised score that works hard to compensate for some really inane dialogue from both. Kidnapper DeVito ("Ralph") amiably steals the scenes he features in, as the story builds to a suitably perilous - and predictable - denouement with big creepy insects, a waterfall, car chases - and everyone gets wet a lot. You get the drift. It's fine to pass an afternoon and there is some chemistry between the two, but it's all a bit of a pale imitation now and the comedic elements have not aged very well either.

I guess I was a bit more impressed with the leads in this movie than the other reviewer here, for I think they held up their end of a story that is, if anything, even more of a take-off on action movies that the Raider franchise.

It is fluff, of course, with odd violence offsetting what is a rather gentle adventure. Good luck finding it on one of the streaming services out there. It is for sale or rent only at this time. I had a chance to watch it free, however, as I wasn’t about to buy or rent it. It is good, but not that good.

**_Goofy escapades in the jungles of Latin America with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas_**

A writer of romantic adventure in Manhattan (Turner) goes to Columbia to save her sister, who’s been kidnapped by shady cousins (Danny DeVito and Zack Norman). She meets an exotic bird smuggler (Douglas) who helps her evade a corrupt colonel (Alfonso Arau) and his military police.

“Romancing the Stone” (1984) came in the wake of the success of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It’s an entertaining flick that effectively walks the balance beam between serious adventure and fun storytelling. Unfortunately, it jumps the shark at the midway point with the drug lord’s carefree, happy attitude as he helps Joan & Jack escape Col. Zolo & his military goons while barely evading deadly machine gun fire. Why so gleeful when they could all die at any moment? Why so merry when he's now targeted as an enemy of the state and they will seize his nice hacienda? Let's just say, he'll never be able to go home again.

It's bad writing, which is a shame because the flick was amusingly thrilling up to that point. Then it became eye-rolling and boring.

Nevertheless, the locations are great, the interplay between Turner and Douglas is entertaining, and there are a lot of (shallow) thrills. Too bad practically the entire second half makes it forgettable fluff. A sequel followed the next year, “The Jewel of the Nile.”

It runs 1 hour, 45 minutes, and was shot in Snow Canyon, Utah (the opening); New York City; and everything else in areas near Mexico City or east of there, specifically Veracruz (the old stone fort), Huasca de Ocampo, Xalapa, El Arenal, Tonaya, Xico, Barraca Grande, and the Valle de Silencio; interiors were done in the studio in Mexico City.

GRADE: B-/C+