Il gioiello del Nilo

In the sequel to 'Romancing the Stone', romance writer Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) are sailing their yacht in the south of France. Joan is frustrated with her writing and sick of their nomadic life after six months on the boat. Joan accepts Sheik Omar Kalifa's offer to go down the Nile and write his biography. Joan and Jack agree to go their separate ways. Ralph (Danny DeVito) seeks revenge against Jack for getting left in prison. They are met by Tarak who has just tried to assassinate Omar. He tells them that Omar is a ruthless dictator who has stolen the Jewel of the Nile. Omar blows up Jack's boat and Tarak warns him that Joan is in danger.

I love 'Romancing the Stone'. This sequel has lost the original's charm. It's stupider and less funny. The joy is mostly gone. Jack and Joan start off on a sour note and is mostly separated in the first half. There are flashes of the old chemistry for the couple. However, even that isn't enough to make this a good movie. It's a sad sequel to a great 80s movie.

"The Jewel of the Nile" is a follow-up to "Romancing the Stone". It lacks the greatness of the original but it keeps the same spirit. This one has lots of adventure and action (even more than the original, and is also far more violent).

Robert Zemeckis didn't return to direct this one, but 4 of the same actors reprise their roles: Michael Douglas (who also produced it), Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito and Holland Taylor. The rest of the cast is entirely different. There are plenty of new characters and new villains.

As the title says, this movie takes us not to Colombia again, but to the Egyptian deserts (in Africa, close to the Nile river). Exotic like the original's but a completely different scenario than the original's.

The main villain in this is Omar Khalifa (well portrayed by Spiros Focás). He is just as treacherous and dangerous as Zolo from the original film. Like Zolo, he fools Joan Wilder so that she falls in his entrapments. He pretends to be a good person, but he's a brutal dictator. But I do like Omar's Egyptian accent. He speaks with a charming accent. Funny that he plays an Egyptian when the actor is Greek, but then, Demis Roussos is a Greek who was born in Egypt.

Avner Eisenberg does a nice portrayal of The Jewel but the character has a mix of charm and silliness and isn't always lovable.

This film has some really funny and great sequences, but also has a large number of faults and does not possess the charm of the original. Therefore, it doesn't match the original's greatness.

Apparently Michael and Kathleen only made this movie because their contract forced them to. Kathleen even attempted to back it out but was threatened by 20th Century Fox to be sued with a $25 million lawsuit. Geez, that is just so wrong! They shouldn't have been forced to do something they didn't want. I sort of can see why they didn't want to do it and why Robert Zemeckis refused to make the sequel.

I used to like this movie almost as much as the original. But now it doesn't seem that great to me anymore. Looking at it now, many things about it don't make much sense. The original is a great blockbuster and a timeless classic.

This is a lesser follow-up to the blockbuster hit ROMANCING THE STONE that aims to repeat the same formula for maximum box office business. Unfortunately, it's a little off. While I enjoyed the first film, I didn't think it was any masterpiece and this film follows the law of diminishing returns in that everything we see is less, not more.

There's a greater focus on silly comedy here, as in the nonsensical dream sequence that re-introduces Douglas's character, and the characters seem more shrill and annoying than we saw previously. The story this time around takes place in the Mediterranean and North Africa, but the plot is even more lightweight and superfluous than before and there's precisely nothing to remember it by. It's pretty well paced, for sure, but in all other respects it's a forgettable film: a cheesy '80s grab for cash and nothing else.

This is a worthy sequel to "Romancing the Stone", although not as polished, with the featured actors already a little stilted after the first outing. It is probably significant that the following 15 years have not yet seen a further addition to the series, despite the star quality and charisma of the two leads who do play comedy well together, both in this truncated series and in the blacker "War of the Roses". The film suffers from a disjointed plotting, which appears to serve only to link together both some admittedly fine action sequences (a ground-based escape in an F-16 fighter plane, among them) and also the interminable arguments and subsequent reconciliations between Douglas and Turner.

Whilst certainly not reaching the heights of style of the original film, "The Jewel of the Nile" nevertheless provides a good rounded slice of action/adventure/romance entertainment, with some witty one-liners for DeVito delivered in his own inimitable style and featuring an endearing cameo from Avner Eisenberg as the mystical `Jewel' of the film's title who delivers his religious and philosophical pronouncements in a curious combination of the spiritual world and western pop culture.

I have given this movie a 7/10 because, taken on its own merits, it is just a delightful movie to watch. It's funny, although the slapstick sometimes is a little over done; but good wins out over evil, and leaves you satisfied at its conclusion. It reminds me of the "On the Road" movies made by Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour during the forties, but with better, if not sometimes outlandish, special effects and chases (e.g., the F-16 chase) and just as many, if not more, one liners.

However, the movie is more than just comedy. It pits secular evil against a spiritual goodness (the Jewel), albeit a spiritual goodness which on the surface seem naive and comic...but which, in reality, achieves its goals through that apparent naivty. That is a serious overtone which many of the previous comments on the movie seem to have overlooked. The Jewel does not perform miracles, but his presence and comic actions create an aura of the miraculous.