Romancing the Stone

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.