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Romancing the Stone

August 30, 2006

One of my favorite movies of my teen years now has a special edition DVD available: Romancing the Stone.

Although the movie was made because Michael Douglas wanted to do something fun he could watch with his kid, I love it because it’s Spider-Man for girls.

Romancing the Stone
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A nerdy romance novelist who only talks to her cat and her man-hungry editor (the always engrossing Holland Taylor) does something completely out of character (travels to Mexico pretending to be Columbia) in order to rescue her sister. Along the way she discovers her true abilities, impressing a local druglord with her writing talent, becoming a glamorous, able, sexy woman, and getting a gorgeous guy.

I guess that’s not so much Spider-Man as your classic Frog Prince setup, where given the right circumstances, the duckling becomes the swan. There’s even a fairy-tale like quest and a buried treasure.

It’s a great combination of adventure, comedy, and romance in a beautiful, exotic setting. I love the score, too. That cha-cha-flavored instrumental when the boat sails in… very evocative.

It’s also available in a two-pack with its sequel, Jewel of the Nile.

3 Responses

Jim Kosmicki writes:

August 31, 2006 at 8:09 AM

loved Romancing the Stone — but I remember being pretty disappointed by Jewel. Then I caught it on cable recently and it’s an interesting movie for right now, seeing how it deals with Westerners unable to understand Arabic religious culture and blowing things up good instead of promoting peaceful solutions instead. I still think I would like it more if it didn’t try to shoehorn in the characters and story arc from Romancing — this movie really feels like an unrelated script that was revised into a sequel by simply adding in the original characters on top. Didn’t the original writer for Romancing die suddenly right after the first one? maybe that explains it.

and in an unrelated note, I’ve used Romancing as an example that Mary Sue stories don’t HAVE to be bad — because this is pretty clearly a meta-Mary Sue in that it’s by a screenwriter putting her Mary Sue character into a plot where the character becomes her own Mary Sue.

Johanna writes:

August 31, 2006 at 8:14 AM

I always liked the idea in Jewel that someone would pretend to be the messiah of their culture by hiring a special effects firm.

Yes, the screenwriter for RtS died in a car accident after that movie, sadly.

Your Mary Sue comments make me think of American Dreamer, which handles the plot even more explicitly, with a fan getting amnesia and literally thinking she’s the main character of a favorite book series.

Two Manga Review Links: Hero Tales and Vampire Knight Â» Comics Worth Reading writes:

January 20, 2010 at 11:03 AM

[...] ads. Then she reviews Vampire Knight. Very funny all around. And illustrated with an image from Romancing the Stone, one of my movie faves! [...]