It isn't often that a movie grabs my attention in the first few scenes. Romancing The Stone was one of the exceptions. There was a period of time that I enjoyed nothing more than reading one of those sensual historical romance novels by writers such as Jude Deveraux or Julie Garwood. These ladies tell stories of more than just love. They include a lot of adventure and fun and danger.
That's exactly how Romancing the Stone begins, with the scene of a scantily clad beauty facing off against her worst enemy. She has a dagger tucked away into the back of her garter belt....a garter belt which is attached to her upper thigh, which happens to be absolutely perfectly shaped and shimmering with perspiration. She grabs the dagger, throws it straight into the heart of her enemy and then rides off into the sunset with her beloved Jesse. I was in heaven at this point. A passionate romance novel had been brought to life. And maybe not.
The scene shifts to a dowdy, plain-faced woman that is hunched over a keyboard, wearing headphones and sobbing uncontrollably. She's an author, and she's just completed the newest installment into her successful series of historical romance novels. The scene that we just witnessed was simply one of her creations. A life of adventure that she writes about and dreams of living herself.
The next morning this young novelist, Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner), receives a package in the mail. The package was originally addressed to her recently deceased brother-in-law, had been forwarded to her, and it contained a treasure map of sorts. Moments later her phone rings, with her sisters' frightened voice coming from the other end. The sister has been abducted and Joan must bring the map to the kidnappers in exchange for her sisters' life. The location of this exchange is in Columbia....South America, not South Carolina.
On the journey to save her sister, Joan takes a few wrong turns, which begins when she boards the wrong bus after her arrival in Columbia. She's being followed by both a really bad fella as well as an inept kidnapper. The circumstances eventually lead her straight into the arms of Jack T. (T...for Trustworthy) Colton (Michael Douglas), a fortune-hunter that captures exotic birds, hoping someday to be rich enough to buy his dream sailboat. When Joan realizes that she is on the far coast from Cartegena, where her sister is being held, she hires Jack to be her guide through the jungle. He reluctantly agrees to do so, but only for a price. No, not that....think Travelers' Cheques.
If you're looking for a film that has a little bit of everything in it, Romancing The Stone is the one you want to see. There are car~truck~jeep chases (and a "little mule" that can outrun them all), and a little digging for buried treasure. There is some slow dancing and sensual kissing, as well as some vehicle river-rafting. There are machetes, the jungle and some vine-swinging. There's an old, abandoned aircraft loaded down with marijuana and a bottle of booze. And then there are the crocodiles, the ones with the "real big snappers".
Romancing the Stone, which was released in 1984, was directed by Robert Zemeckis(Back to The Future, Forrest Gump, Contact, Castaway), who used his typical wonderful special effects here, as well as the comedy that is seen more often in his earlier films. And an interesting little tidbit of info for you is that it was his wife-at-the-time, Mary Ellen Trainor, who is playing the role of the kidnapped sister, Elaine.
The inept kidnapper that I mentioned earlier, Ralph, is played wonderfully by Danny DeVito(Ruthless People, Twins, Junior). Here he is the bad-guy-with-a-heart. It is some of the conversations between he and Zack Norman, who plays brother Ira, that bring some of the funniest moments in Romancing the Stone.
The dark side, the really bad fella, is Zolo, played by Manuel Ojeda. He has very few words, and he really doesn't need them. He says it all with his eyes. In one of the final scenes, Joan Wilder faces off with Zolo above a pit of snarling crocodiles. It is a scene straight from the novel she had been writing as she realizes she has a hidden knife. And I'm not going to tell you what happens when she throws it at his heart.
Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas have a chemisty in this film like few I've ever seen. Their timing was perfect and a wonderful script helped a lot. They will team up again with Danny DeVito later in the sequel, Jewel of The Nile, and again in The War of the Roses but they didn't recapture the chemistry that they shared in Romancing the Stone in either of those films.
Romancing the Stone runs for 105 minutes and is rated PG. There is no nudity, just a glimpse of skin here and there (dangit). The language is nothing that your 1st-grader hasn't heard already in school or on television. But your teenage may ask you for a pet Crocodile, so you may want to go shopping for a new home, a fort. You know, one of those with some real nice damp pits. Hey, you've gotta make the little critter comfortable, right?
Though she can spin wild tales of passionate romance novelist Joan Wilder Kathleen Turner has no life of her own. Then one day adventure comes her way...More at Family Video
When her sister is kidnapped by thugs searching for a priceless jewel in the Colombian jungle, a romance novelist (Kathleen Turner) soon finds her own...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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