Romancing The Stone

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Runtime: 106 minutes

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Zack Norman, Manuel Ojeda

From: 20th Century Fox

Would you believe this was a first time watch? 

As a child of the 80's, it's perhaps surprising to hear that last night was the first time I had seen this film in full. Heck, family members are fans of this so I've seen bits and pieces. For whatever reasons, I put this adventure on the back burner. As I thought it was good, I have little excuse for putting this off for so long.

I am sure many are familiar with the plot of how romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) has to suddenly be a part of an adventure right out of one of her books when she is given a treasure map by her late brother in law and her sister is kidnapped in Colombia so she has to go down there with a map, and she runs into a soldier of fortune (Michael Douglas), so I don't need to say much more, except that they have plenty of wacky adventures that are mostly light in tone as they deal with a cornucopia of colorful characters, including Danny DeVito wearing some amusing clothing.

The movie is largely what you'd expect, both in terms of plot and how the relationship between the two leads progresses. That is fine with me as I thought the movie was fine overall and there were a decent amount of laughs along the way; plus, the scenery is great-Mexico is the stand-in for Colombia-so it is charming entertainment. There still were some “harder” moments in terms of content which was fine with me as again, I am a child of the 80's so as a kid I saw a villain in a film rip out someone's still-beating heart from their chest and thought little about it. One moment at the end with the main bad guy Zolo was a stark reminder of something I have known for ages now: PG movies in the 80's are far different than PG movies in the 21st century; even after PG-13 became a thing, it took a few years before the change was noticeable. I am not surprised that this was quite popular at the time.