Cinema: Educating Joan

ROMANCING THE STONE

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Screenplay by Diane Thomas

Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is the kind of romance novelist who cries over her own happy endings and then puts a sprig of parsley on her cat’s dinner so he can join in celebrating the completion of another bodice-ripping yarn. Because her life is not quite the page turner that her novels are, it is the cheerful, if improbable, business of Romancing the Stone to transform her into a reasonable facsimile of one of her own adventuresses lost in the Colombian jungle. Michael Douglas plays the footloose fellow who helps her decipher the enigmas of her libido and the map that leads to the buried treasure. Their path is strewn with kidnapers, dope smugglers, sadistic policemen and a wide variety of unpleasant reptiles. But Director Zemeckis pushes them along at a pace that disarms disbelief, while realizing the full satirical values of Diane Thomas’ brisk thrusts at adventure-film conventions. Douglas graciously concedes the movie to Turner, the wild and steamy lady of Body Heat, who demonstrates that she can also play repression, frumpiness and comedy. She is the kind of treasure everybody in Hollywood should be filching a map to discover.

—R.S.