Romancing the Stone

Hopeless romantic and novelist Joan Wilder must deliver a map to Columbia in order to save her sister’s life from the hands of kidnappers. Joan is a total urbanite, and falls prey to some misinformation once in South America, and must survive the jungles alongside her deputized guide, Jack Colton, who is only in it for the money. Many other evil people want the treasure map, and inspire several adventures.

Entertaining, adventurous, short, and somewhat dated adventure movie that stood out from the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (10/10) copycats through the mid-eighties. Good chemistry between stars Douglas and Turner render this film bearable through many of its predictably romantic liaisons, while the well-spaced spurts of action give the film enough punch to designate a fun time. I veered from the nachos on this one occasion (forgive me father), and tossed over some bills for a thin-crusted pizza and breadsticks, but now recognize the error of my ways, and apologize for my misguidedness.

This movie also balances many funny and light moments on one hand, and suspense and action in the other. In the same vein, ROMANCING THE STONE can be considered an all-family movie, because it does not contain any scenes of extreme violence, sex or sailor-like swearing. It does contain some nasty bad guys, despite their one-dimensionality, and manages to skewer adventure through its entire meandering plot line. Another great thing about this movie is the smoldering sexuality and come-hither quality of the “young” and beautiful Kathleen Turner. This film reminded me of the many reasons behind my puppy crush on her back in the Duran Duran eighties (see wet nipple scene), and saddened me in regards to her more recent acting work (see her latest TV movie of the week.)

The one extremely bad aspect of this movie (and perhaps of most eighties films, now that we look back on them) is the cheezy, uninspired and ultimately annoying soundtrack and score from this movie. The synchronized noises through most of the film did nothing but harass my attention while I was enjoying the suspense and action, and did very little in the way of enhancing any actual scenes. But I digress on my small point, since for the most part, the film did manage to generate great entertainment, some light and romantic moments, and many scenes sprinkled with action and adventure.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian