Still A Fun Movie
Kathleen Turner stars as Joan Wilder, a very successful and popular, but shy and somewhat depressed romance novelist. One day she receives a mysterious map in the mail pertaining to some jewel in Columbia, and the trouble starts from there. Her sister is kidnapped and being held for ransom by bungling criminals Ralph and Ira, the former who is played by Danny De Vito. Joan arrives in Columbia to try to free her sister by exchanging her for the map, but runs into trouble almost immediately when a shifty local military officer named Zolo tries to forcefully steal the map after her bus ride through the jungle comes to an abrupt end. Jack T. Colton, freelance adventurer and bird catcher, played by Michael Douglas, accidentally encounters her under distress and saves her. She agrees to pay Colton for help in navigating the thick jungles of Columbia to get to a hotel in the city where the exchange was to be made for her sister.
Along the way, Colton convinces her to seek out the treasure on the map instead of just giving over the map. Ralph and Ira, as well as Zolo and his small army, are after it (or them, depending on how you look at it) as well, and plenty of run and gun (mostly the two stars running/escaping) action ensues. As you can imagine, Colton and Wilder become love interests and Danny De Vito provides much of the comedy.
The pace and balance of the movie across all three genres is excellent, and it’s quite simply a very fun movie to watch. The actors all turn in great performances, and the script and plot a blast. This movie, like lots of great (action) movies from the 80s (Commando, Predator, Raiders…) has a great replay value too; it’s an easy movie to watch almost anytime.
On Blu-ray
The Blu-ray is pretty nice; the video is very good, better than I expected. The audio isn’t quite what I hoped for, but it’s still pretty good, more on that soon. The extra features disappoint however, as they are exactly the same as those on the 2006 DVD release, and they don’t add up to much; these include:
Deleted Scenes – Eight scenes total about twenty minutes. These deleted scenes are pretty nice. Most are centered around advancing the relationship between Wilder and Colton, so these are generally quiet dialogue scenes.
Rekindling The Romance: A Look Back – Another twenty minute feature in SD, this contains a look back at the making of the film and a short tribute to the late screenwriter who died in a car accident. The comments from Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny De Vito aren’t anything extraordinary, but it’s entertaining.
A Hidden Treasure: The Screenwriter – This three minute segment in SD is a brief bio and tribute piece with comments from Douglas about the screenwriter Diane Thomas. Romancing The Stone was her first script, which speaks volume about her talent.
Michael Douglas Remembers: This is a very brief, approximately two minute, SD feature where Douglas adds a few more tidbits of memories to the movie.
Douglas, Turner, And Devito: Favorite Scenes: Taken again from the same interview session as the previous feature (which we’ll also see in the Jewel of the Nile extras), this three minute or so SD feature has the stars picking some of their favorite scenes from the film. Pretty useless.
A DTS-HD Lossless Master 5.1 track brings the audio, and it does a respectable job of presenting the action and dialogue. For video, I was impressed. Clarity is sharp and largely grain and speckle free. The colors pop and the blacks are nicely done, with little to no signs of compression. Fox did a fine job here.
Let’s sum it up…