The Jungle Stone

My hankering for jungle movies led me to finally watching 1984's Romancing the Stone. I'd never really wanted to watch it because it seemed like a cheap Indiana Jones knock-off. That's not untrue, but may be a harsher description than it deserves. It's a romantic adventure film that was likely greenlit to capitalise on the success of Indiana Jones. I ought to celebrate the endeavour to make a good genre take root.

The story behind Romancing the Stone's creation is a little more interesting than I expected. First time screenwriter Diane Thomas wrote the script while working as a waitress. Actor Michael Douglas, who would go on to star in the film, saw the script and bought it for Columbia Pictures. Wikipedia quotes him as saying about Thomas, "She was not cautious. The script had a wonderful spirit about it. ... There was a total lack of fear to the writing. It worked." Which I would say is true. It feels a bit like fan-fiction. The character played by Kathleen Turner in the film is kind of a Mary Sue, an obvious avatar for Thomas in her fantasy about being swept off her feet while also earning admiration and respect.

The story is set in Colombia but was shot primarily in Mexico. Turner plays a successful romance novelist whose sister is kidnapped. Despite being a homebody with no practical survival skills, she marches straight from New York to Colombia to single-handedly rescue her sister for some reason. She's a bit clumsy and gets on the wrong bus and is forced to slog through jungles in her expensive heels, tearing her clothes. But experienced handsome man and bird collector (wink wink, nudge nudge) Jack T. Colton (Douglas) can't help but be charmed by her. Can Joan (Turner) see past her own pride to realise Jack is exactly like one of the roguish, but not too roguish, protagonists she always fantasised about in her novels about self-insert Mary Sues?

The movie's a self-insert fantasy about someone who writes self-insert fantasies. I have to love that little hall of mirrors.

I don't have anything against Mary Sues in the right context. What's wrong with a little disposable fantasy now and then? Jack and Joan, running through the jungle, occasionally running into trouble, treasure, or some of Joan's ravenous admirers, is put together nicely enough. It's great to see so much location footage in actual jungles. The film can't hold a candle to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which came out the same year, two months later, but it's a decent little appetiser.

Romancing the Stone is available on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ elsewhere.