 When her sister is kidnapped by thugs searching for a priceless jewel in Colombia, a romance novelist (Kathleen Turner) soon finds her own life filled with adventure. She sets out to rescue her sister and meets up with a handsome fortune seeker (Michael Douglas) who convinces her to beat the bandits to the treasure! Storyline: Joan Wilder, a mousy romance novelist, receives a treasure map in the mail from her recently murdered brother-in-law. Meanwhile, her sister Elaine is kidnapped in Colombia and the two criminals responsible demand that she travel to Colombia to exchange the map for her sister. Joan does, and quickly becomes lost in the jungle after being waylayed by Zolo, a vicious and corrupt Colombian cop who will stop at nothing to obtain the map. There, she meets an irreverent soldier-of-fortune named Jack Colton who agrees to bring her back to civilization. Together, they embark upon an adventure that could be straight out of Joan's novels. Written by Denny Gibbons Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, November 9, 2008 You're the best time I ever had. From the 1980s was born the revolution that has become home theater. Home video playback devices, primarily the VHS cassette deck, supported by the LaserDisc format that improved on the tape-based mediums and offered the more discriminating home theater aficionado what seemed to be the peak of home video picture and sound quality, emerged at affordable prices with an avalanche of equally affordable pre-recorded media. Also emerging was the rise in popularity of cable-based pay-per-month premium television channels, such as HBO and Cinemax, offering buyers dozens of movies per month, played without commercial interruption and, perhaps most importantly, without content edited for material deemed "inappropriate" for over-the-air television. For anyone who grew up on a steady diet of home video tapes, 12" LaserDiscs, and particularly the cable television channels, no doubt the name Romancing the Stone instantly recalls memories of many an airings of the famed 1984 adventure-comedy film, playing in what memory seems to recall being a nearly nonstop loop. The right film, with the right mix of content, including a pair of budding superstars, an up-and-coming director, and offering high adventure, laughs, and a side of romance, Romancing the Stone was a film worthy of its continuous playback and popularity in the waning years of the decade. Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner, The Jewel of the Nile) is the author of several romantic adventure novels. A single woman and a hopeless romantic, she creates fictional worlds in which she longs to live and characters with whom she longs to fall in love. Little does she know that her true-life adventure is set to begin when she receives in the mail a mysterious package and a panicked call from her sister Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor), begging Joan to bring the contents of the package, a treasure map, to a hotel in Cartagena, Colombia. Her arrival in the South American country is marked by difficulties, boarding the wrong bus and, soon enough, coming face-to-face with Zolo (Manuel Ojeda), a man bent on acquiring the map. A mysterious heroic figure suddenly appears on the scene, and Wilder is rescued by the dashing, rugged Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas, King of California), an American who agrees to escort her to Cartagena for a small sum of money. As the pair set out on their adventure, evading gunmen, discovering a downed cargo plane full of illegal drugs, and staying one step ahead of Ralph (Danny DeVito, Twins) and Ira (Zack Norman), the pair responsible for kidnapping Joan's sister, they decide to seek the treasure at map's end before handing over the map and, hopefully, rescuing Elaine in one piece. The success and long-term staying power of Romancing the Stone may be attributed to several crucial factors. First and foremost, the film effortlessly melds four key magic ingredients that make a film successful -- action, drama, comedy, and romance -- and does so with an ease and charisma not often found in cinema prior to and in the years following the film's release. The adventure film with romantic and comedic twists is nothing new; Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back are but two contemporaries of Romancing the Stone that offered audiences films heavy on action but with a sprinkling of romance and laughter in support of the primary story. Romancing the Stone sets itself apart from the crowd thanks to what is often equal parts comedy, drama, action, and romance. Many scenes elicit various emotional responses in the viewer. An action scene may offer romantic overtones or a comedic twist in the resolution of the immediate conflict; a scene solidifying the romantic angle simultaneously features one of the film's funniest moments; the film's dramatic overtones are often accompanied by heavy doses of action. Indeed, Diane Thomas' script is cinematic gold, a classic tale of a damsel in distress who discovers true love in the form a rugged rescuer while on a long road filled with adventure, perils, pitfalls, laughs, riches, and relentless enemies. The script's brilliant integration of styles, smartly-written characters, and classic love story mean nothing without just the right talent lending their skills to the picture, and in that regard, Romancing the Stone, again, is an unequivocal success. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner share a chemistry together that seems to defy the laws of cinematic convention, the relationship not only believable but natural in its formation, progression, and solidification, within the time restraints of the film and its place amongst the action, drama, and comedy, of course. Douglas is superb as the hero while Turner captures the lonely heart spirit perfectly, aided by a script that pens her as a lonely, hopeless romantic who calls her cat Romeo, dreams of falling in love with a fictional rough-and-tumble hero of her own creation, lives vicariously in a fantasy world that shares many of the same thrills as she is about to experience first-hand, and it is her familiarity with literary convention and adventure that allows her, at times, to be the true action hero of the film, even if her actions save the day through blind luck. Her character is terrifically written and equally well performed. Danny DeVito makes a bad guy lovable; his charm and wit make him the perfect choice to portray a wannabe thug that talks the talk but turns tail and runs for cover when push comes to shove. Romancing the Stone is a landmark film of sorts, one that made careers for its lead actors and director Robert Zemeckis (The Polar Express) and effortlessly combined romance, action, drama, and humor in nearly equal parts. Featuring a fine ensemble cast, including a pair of headliners that share an on-screen chemistry as natural and refined as the best in Hollywood history, and plenty of charm, wit, and good old-fashioned adventure storytelling, Romancing the Stone remains a popular, admired, and fresh title to this day, almost a quarter-century after its initial theatrical release. 20th Century Fox's Blu-ray release, unfortunately, is hit-or-miss. Sporting a high quality video transfer yet a surprisingly lackluster soundtrack and only a meager helping of bonus materials, Romancing the Stone on Blu-ray is a recommended purchase only for longtime fans of the film or those without the previous DVD edition in their film libraries. IMDb Rating (03/10/17): 6.9/10 from 66,715 users
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