Romancing the Stone

A classic adventure story that brilliantly transcends its fairly average formula (buttoned-up city gal is softened by devil-may-care chancer while outwitting baddies in foreign lands) through a mixture of perfect casting, lashings of chemistry between the stars and a clever script. Read full review

A thoroughly enjoyable Raiders of the Lost Ark inspired adventure film, set in the present and starring Michael Douglas as an American hustler in Columbia who helps uptight romance novelist Kathleen Turner search for buried treasure. [22 June 1984, p.12]

Douglas and Turner make a great double act in this exuberantly directed adventure movie with a great start turn from the always enjoyable De Vito. Good stuff. Read full review

The filmmakers have devised some clever twists on the earlier films they recall - Raiders of the Lost Ark and Peter Pan among them - and they reserve a good share of the derring-do for their heroine, who's a refreshingly far cry from the helpless ladies-in-distress of old. Under the direction of Robert Zemeckis, the action goes limp and perfunctory at a few key moments, weakening the picture's wallop. But it still packs a healthy amount of self-deflating fun. Read full review

Although comparisons with Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark are inevitable, it is the interplay between Turner and Douglas that gives the film its real charm. Norman and DeVito score strongly in roles that would have been played by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre 30 years ago, and the whole film has the feel of an old Warner Bros. thriller with broadly comic overtones. Read full review

Turner and Douglas have great chemistry—in their best moments, they recall Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable on the road in It Happened One Night—helped by the fact that Douglas is willing to be undercut by both Turner and the screenplay. Read full review

A silly, high-spirited chase picture that takes us, as they say, from the canyons of Manhattan to the steaming jungles of South America. After all the Raiders rip-offs, it's fun to find an adventure film that deserves the comparison, that has the same spirit and sense of humor. Read full review

This slapstick adventure comedy is in the commercial genre of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it's a simpler, more likable entertainment than Raiders; it doesn't leave you feeling exhausted.

Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner are wonderful together. They look great when they're in bed together and they look even better when they're fighting. Throw Danny DeVito into the mix and you've got a very enjoyable, watchable trio of heroes. Read full review

Working from an intermittently clever script by Diane Thomas, director Robert Zemeckis, a talented Spielberg protege (Used Cars), sets his sights on fun and proceeds to blast away at our defenses. Some of the fun is real, but much of it seems grimly willed, which tends to be more exhausting than entertaining. Douglas himself is a less than ideal choice as a hip Indy Jones adventurer -- there's no sense of self-enjoyment in his swagger. But Turner more than compensates. [16 Apr 1984, p.93]

The script is sharp and funny, the direction sure-footed on both the comedy and action fronts, and the whole thing adds up to rather more concerted fun than Indiana Jones' flab-ridden escapade in the Temple of Doom. Read full review

Douglas' performance is surprisingly dull, and he has a script to match (by Diane Thomas). Moral: Remaking Raiders is harder than it looks. [04 Apr 1984, p.B6]

After a fairly promising getaway, Romancing the Stone gradually chases its tail into enough melodramatic dead ends to deteriorate into an expendable runaround, all too easy to shrug off as a miscalculated clone of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Read full review

An elaborately produced, mostly charmless adventure-comedy that intends to make fun of a kind of romantic fiction that's one step removed from what the movie is all about. Read full review

Directed by an unimaginative Robert Zemeckis three years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, it uses Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones franchise as the template through which to bolster Douglas’s public machismo. Read full review

Director Robert Zemeckis displays such dazzling cinematic know-how that it's genuinely depressing when this film falls off into the usual self-ridicule. Read full review

Heading for the jungles in her high heels, Turner is like a lot of unwitting screen heroines ahead of her, guaranteed that her drab existence is about to be transformed – probably by a man, preferably handsome and adventurous. Sure enough, Michael Douglas pops out of the jungle. The expected complications are supplied by the kidnappers, Danny DeVito and Zack Norman. Read full review