Review of Romancing the Stone (1984) by Edith N — 28 Jan 2012

This Time, a Guy Comedy.

I actually watched this in two installments today. Heather invited me to go run errands with her, and since I don't see her often enough, I did. I mentioned to her that I had been watching this, and that it had not been my idea. She had seen it before, so we talked it over a little. Therefore, I can assure you that my feelings about this movie are not mine alone, and she sees exactly the same problems with it as I do. It's also worth noting that the male-to-female voting ratio for it on IMDb is running at over five to one at the moment, so even though women have actually rated it marginally higher, men are clearly watching it more. There are probably a lot of factors involved on that one, but it's still an interesting data point. I know, too, that I'm going to get accused of overthinking things again, but the problem I had pretty much leapt off the screen at me, no thinking of any kind required.

Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is a romance novelist. One day, she takes her latest novel to her publisher (Holland Taylor), or possibly agent. When she gets home, her apartment has been ransacked. She has received a mysterious envelope from her late brother-in-law in Colombia, sent just before he was hacked to pieces. She gets a call from her sister, Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor). Elaine is being held hostage by some seedy characters, including Danny DeVito, in exchange for what's in the envelope--which is a map to a treasure called "[i]el Corazon[/i]." The only way for Joan to save Elaine's life is for her to take the map to her. Only in Colombia, she gets on the wrong bus and ends up in the middle of nowhere. There is a bus crash, and she meets dashing Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas). She is being chased by the men of Zolo (Manuel Ojeda), the "Minister of Culture" and a cheap thug with a private army. There are goings-on and escapades and so forth, all in the name of a very large emerald indeed.

So what's my problem? My problem is how the film treats Joan. Yes, she's completely unprepared to be out in the jungle--but of course she is! There is no reason to expect Joan to know anything about wilderness survival. The shoes she was wearing were completely reasonable for city wear--and lopping the heels off just made them worthless, not better for wear in the rainforest. No, Cartagena isn't New York, but it's still a good-sized city. And any travel agent worth the job could have ensured arrangements to get Joan straight to her hotel. For example by flying her into Cartagena's own airport. Joan isn't prepared to be shot at. We don't learn much of anything about Jack's past, but it's clearly a lot more rugged than the rough-and-tumble life of a romance novelist. We're supposed to be laughing at her for how she handles everything, or fails to, but she probably does a better job at everything than I would. Yes, I speak more Spanish than she does, but she can walk better than I can.

The story isn't all that involved, either. It's not a treasure hunt in the classical sense. They find one thing on the treasure map, completely by coincidence, and everything falls into place after that. Since none of the characters are terribly bright, a challenge would be over their heads. Danny DeVito and his comrades accomplish nothing, and the closest they get is through pure luck. Zolo and the others are only a threat because they have guns. Sure, that's a pretty serious threat, and I don't want to underplay it, but they also only seem to stumble onto Our Heroes through pure luck. But we'd never know, because they aren't drawn in any kind of detail. Joan and Jack are two-dimensional characters, but that's a dimension better than anyone else gets. There's nothing here that we have any reason to care about. We know nothing about Jack, but we don't know much more about Joan. Why is Elaine in Colombia? Who knows? Then again, who cares?

Oh, it could have been worse. After all, they contemplated casting Sylvester Stallone in this, and that would have been terrible. I've seen him successfully manage comedy, but more in a sort of "comedy happens around him" way. Even in [i]Oscar[/i], which I like quite a lot, I'm not sure he was funny. It helps that Michael Douglas is more wiry than physically intimidating. We've never seen him blow up half the Vietnamese army. Now, the story never lets us believe for one minute that he's really in any danger, even when there are machine guns firing at him, but he's bulletproof, not a superhero. And any hero in a story where the main characters being shot at is at least partially bulletproof. They have to be. Michael Douglas also didn't necessarily take himself seriously, and it took a long time for Sylvester Stallone to even seem to be lighthearted. Michael Douglas starred opposite a lion once. How seriously can you take yourself after that?