Romancing the Stone

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