Romancing the Stone and
The Jewel of the Nile

(Fox Home Entertainment, 8.29.2006)

Romancing the Stone has been kicking around on DVD for seven years, but I never bothered to re-visit this box office smash from 1984 before now because a) the old DVD had no extras and a non-anamorphic transfer and b) I remembered this as a particularly disposable example of mid-80s Hollywood frivolity. Boy, was I wrong. Sandwiched between director Robert Zemeckis's three best films (I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Used Cars, and Back to the Future) -- and made shortly before he turned into a CGI-obsessed robot -- Romancing the Stone shares many of their charms, even though it is the only film in the bunch that wasn't written by Zemeckis. Admittedly, this is pretty light entertainment, but it has a throwback wit that recalls the great Katherine Hepburn comedies of the '30s, '40s, and '50s (ie. Bringing Up Baby, The African Queen).

The less that's said about The Jewel of the Nile -- the phoned-in sequel to Romancing the Stone -- the better. When a movie's own director accuses it of being racist (as Lewis Teague does in one of the featurettes on this disc), you know something is seriously wrong. Maybe this is the movie I was thinking of in my distorted memories of Romancing the Stone. In all honesty, this is one of the most pointless and idiotic sequels I've ever seen. My advice is to avoid this 2-disc bundling of both films and just buy the stand-alone edition of Romancing the Stone.

Judging from his absence on the Romancing the Stone extras, it seems that Robert Zemeckis's memory of the film may parallel mine. Of course, this may just mean that he's busy playing video games or digitally-altering archival footage somewhere. In his absence, the extras we get on both films are modest, but more than sufficient. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner did some of the most appealing work of their careers in Romancing the Stone and they dominate the series of featurettes on each disc.

Due tribute is also paid to screenwriter Diane Thomas, who was plucked from obscurity after Douglas discovered her Romancing the Stone script. Only a year after the film was released, she tragically died in a car accident. The strange thing -- and I'm surprised Douglas admits this so readily -- is that she died in a car that Michael Douglas bought her as a gift for the film's huge success.

In addition to these featurettes, The Jewel of the Nile includes a commentary by director Lewis Teague and both discs feature deleted scenes and terrific anamorphic transfers. Romancing the Stone is particularly well-photographed by the great Dean Cundey, whose work has amazed me recently in the most unlikely places (The Witch Who Came From the Sea, Road House). No wonder he's so popular with visual geniuses like Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, and John Carpenter. -- Jonathan Doyle