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"Romancing the Stone (1984) and The Jewel of the Nile (1985) recently became available to watch as part of subscription to Amazon Prime Video at no additional cost.\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\tI like Romancing the Stone (1984) very much. It presents charmingly a romance novelist whose comfort zone does not extend more than twenty feet away from her typewriter and cat but is willing to do what is expected of her and holding her own in situations akin to the dire straits presented in her books. How much she grows and how she does not need to be rescued by a man in the final act is the soul of the movie. The chemistry between Turner and Douglas seems very real and very precious. The action and adventure are overblown and unrealistic and quite wonderful. It is unabashedly a romp.\n \n\n\n\t7/9.6\n \n\n\n\t \n \n\n\n\tI hesitated to watch The Jewel of the Nile (1985) because of what I remembered of it. I gave it a chance because it may be that I have mellowed over the years. It is obvious that I have not. I am far from liberal but this movie is as racist and insensitive as actors in blackface doing a Minstrel Show. The title character is glorified by Sunni but casting selected a Hebrew from Atlanta. The villain is a dreadfully stereotypical Arab megalomaniac but is played by a man with classically Greek face and mannerisms. Even the minor role of a Nubian fighting for the heroine's hand was performed by a Senegalese. Please do not misunderstand me: the first two actors are wonderful and are to be celebrated in other roles and the third does acquit himself well but none of them have any place in this movie. Every aspect of the Middle Easterners from dress to beliefs to entertainment is mindlessly stereotypical. 'Jokes' such as \"No sheep is safe tonight\" during a native celebration clearly shows the writer's and director's mindset. That this movie was made after the 1950s should move it into the realm of a hate crime.\n \n\n\n\tThis would not be a good movie even if a person could put all of that aside. It is a string of scenes threaded onto a miserably thin plotline. There is no romantic tension. There is no rising action. There is no reason for such a well-funded movie to have special effects done by Mrs. Pritchett's third-grade art class. \n \n\n\n\t-23/10\n "
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