Thursday, December 08, 2011

Used Yachts

Romancing the Stone (1984)
directed by Robert Zemeckis
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Michael Douglas has never looked less like a movie star than here, selling none of the crooked charm that made Harrison Ford the definitive good-guy-gone-to-seed in Temple of Doom, two months later. Temple of Doom was an action picture for people who think young. Kathleen Turner might have held her own as an Indy love interest, but Zemeckis prefers charades with the house cat and a few homely jokes about the private lives of single women.

The plot is by-the-numbers nostalgia for an American era (take your pick) that compelled kids/men/women to read adventure stories to try and escape their daily lives. But an extra, necessary layer of self-awareness doesn't make the plane ride south, so the gummy crowd that likes to catch Romancing the Stone on Sunday afternoon TV sees all this tepid creative confusion and proudly mumbles on about "old-fashioned" comforts. The contrivances are irrelevant, the comedy dull. When Dean Cundey can't add anything more than a lime green glow to the eponymous emerald, something's wrong.

That ungainly sailing ship outside Joan's Manhattan apartment is a good metaphor for the movie. Or would Danny DeVito be better, wasted as he is in small suits and a discarded subplot? It sounds mean, but what about the weirdly violent construction and unnecessarily cruel disposal of the lead villain? He shouldn't miss out on these good times anymore than I should miss my hundred minutes. But here we are together, friends in a pit of crocodiles.