Review of Romancing the Stone (1984) by Allan C — 15 Feb 2015

Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner have both appeared in a number of smart modern day classics, but I have to say this silly comic romantic adventure film is the one that always first comes to mind for these two fine actors.

Turner is a romance novel writer whose sister is kidnapped and she needs to give the bad guys a map leading to valuable treasure. She then meets up with colorful adventurer Douglas and the two have a series of exciting and funny set pieces, meeting up with a colorful cast of characters, including the very funny Danny DeVito, although Alfonso Arau easily steals the film during his small bit in the film as a drug kingpin who's also a huge fan of Turner's steamy romance novels.

The film was made by quite a few people before they became huge. Director Robert Zemeckis had only made two films at this point ("Used Cars" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"). Turner and Douglas had been in some major films, but weren't major stars quite yet.

Devito was known primarily for "Taxi" but wasn't a film star yet. Composer Alan Silvestri had been scoring "CHiPs" and "TJ Hooker" episodes prior to this before going onto major films like "Back to the Future" or "The Avengers.

" The same goes for director of photography Dean Cundey, who was mostly doing low budget horror and science fiction films before this (though many are now classics like "Escape from New York" or "The Thing") before making the likes of "Jurassic Park" or "Apollo 13.

" Interestingly, this film is the only writing credit for Diane Thomas, who never made anything else (though there was uncredited work by a number of other writers). Before this film was released the studio was convinced they had a flop on their hands and actually fired director Zemeckis off of "Cocoon.

" However, "Romancing the Stone" was a huge hit, even spawning a sequel, and as a result Zemeckis was giving the okay to go ahead with his own project, "Back to the Future." I'd also say that this film was surprisingly profane and violent for a PG film, but I suppose this was in the days before PG-13.

Overall, this is a lightweight adventure romantic comedy, but the chemistry and star power between Turner and Douglas is terrific, the action is exciting and the comedy is funny.