Romancing the Stone is an action/comedy starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Zack Norman, Mary Ellen Trainor, and Manuel Ojeda.
Joan Wilder (Turner) is a romance novelist who lives a quiet, somewhat lonely existence with her cat Romeo. Her agent (Holland Taylor) tries to fix her up with dudes, but she's waiting on Mr. Right. And then her sister Elaine (Trainor), who is in Colombia and whose husband has just been murdered, calls her up and asks her to come down and bring her the treasure map that she just got in the mail - Elaine has been kidnapped by Ralph (DeVito) and Ira (Norman), a couple of smugglers and general ne'er-do-wells.
Joan flies down to Colombia despite speaking no Spanish and being utterly unprepared fcor the task ahead of her, immediately gets on the wrong bus and winds up literally "hell and gone from Cartagena", and winds up running afoul of the evil Zolo (Ojeda), a Colombian general who is also really into stabbing people. A bird smuggler named Jack (Douglas) saves her life, and then the two of them embark on a rollicking adventure through the jungle to find "el Corazón", which turns out to be a big ol' emerald.
Romancing the Stone is kinda-sorta in the vein of Raiders of the Lost Ark and similar movies, except the focus is squarely on the characters rather than the MacGuffin or search for same (actually, Jack has to convince Joan to even go after the "treasure;" her only focus is on her sister. It hits some of the same beats, including the sister military man in black pursuing our heroes, but the stakes are overall much lower. No traps, no Nazis, some soldiers, sure, and much more comedy.
Turner and Douglas both sell their roles, and the also display some real chemistry together. Douglas manages to play Jack as a sleazeball, but not a complete sleazeball, all the way through, and I kind of appreciated that there's no moment of betrayal - he considers making a copy of the map and leaving Joan to find the treasure on his own, but as he falls for her, he reconsiders and sticks around. Likewise, Ralph and Ira are criminals, but they're as good as their word and release the sisters when they give up the map.
Overall, it's funny, the action is nicely paced, and the ending with Joan and Jack sailing away on a boat down a street in New York (presumably on their way to the harbor) seems earned. The only real tragedy is the crocodile that wound up skinned after he saved their necks by doing a chomp on Zolo, poor guy.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high
Next up: Romeo + Juliet
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