Romancing the Stone (1984) on Netflix
PG19841h 46mActionAdventureComedy
Romance novelist Joan Wilder flies to Colombia with a map that is the ransom for her kidnapped sister Elaine. Stranded in the jungle, she is helped by the smuggler Jack T. Colton.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.9/10113,202 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Joan Wilder writes adventure romances from her New York apartment, where she lives with her cat Romeo. A neighbor hands her an envelope from her murdered brother-in-law Eduardo; inside is a map. Her sister Elaine, Eduardo's widow, is held by two antiquities smugglers, the cousins Ira and Ralph, and telephones Joan to say the map is her ransom and must come to Cartagena, Colombia. Joan flies south, but Colonel Zolo, who wants the map himself, puts her on a bus that carries her deep into the interior. When it collides with a Land Rover, Joan is stranded; Zolo holds her at gunpoint until the Rover's owner, an American bird smuggler named Jack T. Colton, shoots it out with him. Joan offers Jack traveler's cheques to lead her out of the jungle to a telephone.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Romancing the Stone (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The screenplay was written five years earlier by Malibu waitress Diane Thomas, in what would end up being her only screenplay made into a movie; she died in a car crash a year and a half after the film's release.
- Studio insiders expected the film to flop: after viewing a rough cut, the producers of the then-under-development Cocoon fired Zemeckis as director of that film. It became a surprise hit and 20th Century Fox's only big hit of 1984.
- Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood declined the role of Jack T. Colton while the film was at Columbia, and Sylvester Stallone, Paul Newman and Christopher Reeve were considered before Douglas hired himself; Debra Winger was the studio's top choice for Joan Wilder.
- After production completed, Turner sued the filmmakers to pay for plastic surgery for injuries sustained during shooting; Zemeckis nonetheless worked with her again, casting her as the voice of Jessica Rabbit in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
- Turner recalled terrible arguments with Robert Zemeckis on Romancing, calling him a film-school grad fascinated by cameras and effects: "I never felt that he knew what I was having to do to adjust my acting to some of his damn cameras."
- Filmsite.org included it as one of the best films of 1984 and Entertainment Weekly listed it among the films that made 1984 one of the best years for Hollywood films; then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan watched it at Camp David in May 1984.
