Romancing the Stone (1984)

This is the first in a trio of films with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito -- the other two being The Jewel of the Nile (1985) and The War of the Roses (1989).

The movie opens in the American West, and the story is pure cheese. Cut to Joan Wilder (Turner) sitting at her typewriter. She's a romance novelist, and she's just finished her latest novel. She's pleased with the way it came together at the end.

Based on the opening sequence, are we then supposed to excuse the movie itself for being pure cheese? My thought being: This is a framing device, and starting off with one of Joan Wilder's romance novels makes little sense, unless we're being prepared for the movie itself as being another one of her romance novels. Maybe one that "really happened" to her, but one that she will then fictionalize and write as a romance novel.

As I watched it, I thought: The quality of the script and the filming is on par with the 1980s TV show The A-Team... maybe just with a bigger budget. Is this supposed to be bad on purpose? Is it the romance writer's version of Indiana Jones?

Wilder's sister is kidnapped, and she goes to Columbia to pay her ransom. The plot itself is over-the-top and more or less beside the point. There's a treasure map, an emerald, and a love interest, Jack Colton (Douglas).

DeVito, meanwhile, plays a character on the "bad guy's side," but to be quite honest, his part isn't that important, and the film is really focused on Turner and Douglas.

At the end of the movie, Joan Wilder has written another novel, and her editor has just read it. It's the story this movie has just told. Since Jack is there at the end, I guess we assume the adventure actually happened, and since he has bought a boat, I'm guessing that maybe they got the emerald back, even though it was eaten by an alligator?

But then I thought, the version of the story we saw in the movie might just be the version of the story Joan Wilder wrote. Maybe the "real events'" were much different, much more serious and dire. Maybe we just watched the "pure cheese" version as written by a romance writer.

But that's just my pretty meta-attempt at trying to explain and excuse why this movie is so bad. Because it's pretty bad.

Rating: 2/5 stars

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