Retrospective Film Review

Romancing the Stone (1984) • 40 Years Later — the swashbuckling romance that saved Zemeckis’s career

A mousy romance novelist sets off for Colombia to ransom her kidnapped sister, and soon finds herself in the middle of a dangerous adventure hunting for treasure with a mercenary rogue.

In 1984, Robert Zemeckis’s name was mud in Hollywood. That’s right. The famed director of classics like Back to the Future (1985) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) was one box office flop away from obscurity. Zemeckis and his future hits were saved by two unlikely heroes: an unknown female screenwriter, Diane Thomas, and actor Michael Douglas (then mostly known for being the son of Hollywood star Kirk Douglas).

The film they presented to Zemeckis as a possible directing project seemed equally unlikely to be a box office success. It was an action-adventure film that called for a female lead and contained more than a hint of the dated swashbuckling tropes that were thought to have long since run their course. The…