The 1980s was a strange time for movies and their ratings from certification boards. A movie that includes references to rape, a dismemberment, drug wars, a (albeit very chaste) sex scene and a crocodile chewing off a man’s arm only rated a PG in 1984. We are of course talking about Romancing the Stone, starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, the delightfully daft action romance directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is the nervous author of romance novels that sound like they would be at home in the Mills and Boon section of your local library. She gets sick at the drop of a hat and cries at the end of her own novels, but when her sister is kidnapped in the Columbian jungle, races to find a lost treasure to pay the ransom. Along the way she encounters a mercenary, Jack T Colton, played by Michael Douglas, who reminds Joan of the protagonist of her novels. Can she find the treasure before the corrupt army officer hunting her does? Can she save her sister from the kidnappers before she meets a sticky end?
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Romancing the Stone can definitely be described as a romp. The plot is relatively standard for any fan of romance novels: girl meets boy in unusual scenario and doesn’t like him, realises he isn’t an idiot, almost dies, and rides off into the sunset with her new beau. The movie hardly breaks new ground in this respect, but it is fun, and even though the material is daft and could be played for laughs, all the actors play the scenes straight without straying into parody. Even when Colton uses the treasure as a cricket box, hiding it down his trousers before taking a solid strike with a rifle butt, no one breaks out into silly laughs or cracks one-liners which would be expected in a modern-day movie.
Kathleen Turner is well cast as the mousey maiden who rushes to her sister’s rescue. She is by turns vulnerable, yet also ballsy when taking on the final villain with moves from her own novel. In a turn not often seen in romance novels, Turner’s Wilder is capable of defending herself (something that rarely happens now, let alone in 1980s movies). There are also the subtle changes in her character from hair scraped back in the early scenes, to let free once she realises she is capable of more than she thought.
Michael Douglas is well-cast as the accidental action hero who finds a woman in the jungle and then spends the rest of the movie trying to work out how to use her to get the treasure, before realising he is in love with her. The on-screen chemistry between the two main actors gives an easy energy that makes their romance seem believable.
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Danny DeVito is the main supporting cast, and whilst he is, to some degree, just comic relief, repeatedly outwitted by Turner and Douglas, he doesn’t play the part for laughs but rather as a man out of his depth and repeatedly undone by his brother’s machinations. Robert Zemeckis does a wonderful job of directing. There are not really any subplots to deal with; what you see is very much what you get, but it works. The action moves along at a fair pace, and the final scenes with the villains getting their comeuppance are tight, tense and even now, forty years later hold up surprisingly well.
Romancing the Stone could be described as Hallmark does Tomb Raider – an action-adventure treasure hunt with a side helping of gentle romance. If you like National Treasure or Sleepless in Seattle, this is the movie for you.
Romancing the Stone was released in the UK on 30th March 1984.