I told my roommate that I preferred action to comedy. I thought we all understood that romance wasn’t even an option. But as he read the disheartening list of movie titles, only one stood out.
Romancing the Stone had piqued my interest ever since I stumbled across the abject DOS game Paganitzu (1991), bastard progeny of the movie. I later heard that the film was an early pioneer in the resurgence of the jungle-adventurer genre that also spawned the Indiana Jones storyline. So when I was further informed that Romancing holds a respectable 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I agreed to break my film fast.
The story opens into the curiously mundane life of Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner), romantic novelist, who pours her heart and hopes into the pages she pens. Unlike her heroines, Joan’s personal life is uncaptivating and unkempt—until her sister in South America calls and begs Joan to ransom her from kidnappers. Instructed to bring an old map, Joan sets off for Columbia, bravely bumbling through the foreign culture and fearsome jungles, followed by thieves and thugs, and finally guided by the moody and nomadic Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas). Suddenly living her own novel adventure, she begins to wonder, and worry, whether Jack could be its missing hero.
I did not expect the movie’s comical abundance. Joan’s abysmal life contrasts in amusing contradiction to her romantic heroines’. Jack’s apt and astute answers to each dilemma created unintentional hilarity; at his every pause and silence, his deadpan sarcasm kept me wondering what humorous remark he would make next. The villains, constantly challenged in their attempts to follow Joan’s unpredictable itinerary, and outmatching expertise with effort, act as comic foils to each other, sometimes coldly cruel, other times absurdly clumsy, though not ridiculous. The story is riddled with genuine gags and laughter, but is also cringingly cliché (albeit laughably) at times.
Nor does the action disappoint. Flash floods and perilously plunging falls, gun battles, bus crashes, standoffs and jeep chases punctuate the film without overwhelming it. The movie opens in a Western setting with a well-thrown knife, but involves more traditional shootouts and a lively machine-gun battle. But while the action is explosive, the violence is (almost) never bloody or macabre. As they wend their way, the heroine and anti-hero drive, tramp, slide, trudge, ride, and jump from rainforest to river, hovel to hotel, and cave to castillo.
The film is a veritable child of the eighties, from the big hair to the Model 2500 telephones. Alan Silvestri’s awfully inappropriate score of synthesized saxophones and slap bass hearkens back to a formidable history of the decade’s television shows and theme songs. Even the outrageous and overblown action and violence bears its birthmark. While sometimes sadly dated, these aspects made the movie even more merrily entertaining.
My only regret, besides the lamentable music, was the quantity of profane language. Jack in particular is frequently irascible and irreverent, though never obscene, and a few of the other characters sometimes indulge. There are also two brief displays of dishabille (one with the leading duo in apparent full undress), but I thought them neither excessively prolonged nor overtly lurid.
I appreciated the movie, finding it a remarkable but mostly pleasing blend of comedy, action, and romance, in just balance. I’m not an eighties fan by any means, but I thought the era’s influences were more amusing than annoying. The movie was just enough over the top to entertain, but always avoided going too far. I enjoyed it entirely; it is definitely worth a watch.
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