Auf der Jagd nach dem grünen Diamanten

I love this movie. I'm sure that it's in my top-ten somewhere, because ever since I was a kid, I've never gotten sick of watching it. The premise is one of those that's just so damn crazy it actually works. It starts with a successful romance novelist, Joan Wilder, who has just finished her last book, but lacks the sort of love-life that she writes about. When she learns that her sister has been kidnapped and is being held hostage, she takes off to South America to help her out. It seems that the kidnappers want a treasure map that is in Joan's possession. Joan is very much a city girl and doesn't fully realize the bind that she and her sis have gotten themselves into. Once in South America, she takes the wrong bus, which breaks down in the South American jungle. When she's held up by a corrupt Police Chief, a very rugged, unshaven, shot-gun toting, Michael Douglas (Jack Colton) shows up and kicks some ass. See, Jack is a bird-trapper who wants nothing more than enough cash to buy himself a yacht. Realizing that Joan is lost in the jungle and fully incapable of surviving on her own, Jack agrees to take her to the nearest town for $300 in travellers' checks, so off they go. By now, we've learned that besides the two goons who've kidnapped Joan's sister (one of which is Danny DeVito in one of his funniest roles EVER) the South American police are after the map as well. Everyone wants what's at the end of the map. What follows for the next hour and a half is one of the most exciting and funny action/adventure movies ever filmed. Michael Douglas is absolutely perfect in the role of Jack Colton and delivers some of the funniest one-liners I've ever heard. Kathleen Turner is equally great as the naive romantic and, as always, she looks great. A great script is brougth to life perfectly by Robert Zemeckis and his direction is air-tight. Please go watch this movie, even if you've seen it a hundred times already......"Oh YEAH!!!! Now that's a campfire!!!!

One review is saying this is a film only for people nostalgic who lived in that time period. But I was born in the year 2000, and the movie fills me with the kinds of romance, adventure, and emotion, that is timeless. Part of the reason for this is the superb atmosphere. You really feel you are there in all of the locations. It is one of the most atmospheric movies you can watch. The other good thing about it: no pointless CGI. Everything made nowadays is just done on computers with CGI characters. It's never believable. Maybe we need to go back to how things were done in the past. Sets, matte paintings, and practical effects. CGI = no imagination.

When a version of a female Walter Mitty is ever done no doubt about it that Kathleen Turner should get first call. Unless you think she kind of did it already with Romancing The Stone.

Turner is a romance novelist by profession who in real life is a rather humdrum sort prone to accidents. But a piece of mail from her sister who is in Colombia with a map to a rather large emerald, the Hitchcockian McGuffin of the film leads her on a high road to adventure the kind of thing she writes about.

Her adventure in Colombia includes taking the wrong bus, being chased by a free wheeling army colonel, falling in the hands of drug dealers, pursued by bottom feeding crook Danny DeVito and finally partnering with the kind of adventure hero she writes about in Michael Douglas.

Douglas and Turner would prove so popular that they did two other pictures in the 80s. The film itself got an Oscar nod for Editing.

Some others in this gifted cast are Mary Ellen Trainor as her sister, Holland Taylor as Turner's editor, Alfonso Arau who is a drug dealer fan of her work, and Manuel Ojeda as the army colonel obsessed with that big green jewel.

Romancing The Stone is a lushly photographed and vigorous satire on all those old action/adventure films. You know, the stuff you only see in romance novels.

I'm not a fan of romantic comedies, but this is one exception to that.

The whole premise is ridiculous, the plot twists improbable, but who cares? This is a movie meant to entertain and it does so successfully. Don't look for any political statements or tests of one's intellect--you won't find any. Just sit back, suspend your disbelief, and enjoy the show.

Years later and a knowing glance or a strong saxophone riff will take you back to the eighties. Small cast with solid performances by all and it really was a joy to watch all over again.