Amy Adler Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) has achieved her romantic dreams with Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) in this film's predecessor, Romancing the Stone. Or, wait, has she? The in-love twosome have been sailing around the world on Jack's boat, having many adventures. But, there is no ring on Joan's finger yet and she, as a successful romance novelist, is a bit bored with the life at sea. In addition, she has writer's block. Likewise, Jack has been taking Joan for granted. Therefore, when the two stop at an Arab port and Joan is charmed by a Middle East ruler, Omar, who wants her to write his autobiography, the lady writer says yes. Jack is not pleased. Then, too, Colton encounters an old nemesis, Ralph (Danny DeVito) who is interested in Jack helping him find a new treasure called "Jewel of the Nile". Soon, this awkward duo is trying to rescue Joan, who has actually been kidnapped by the evil Omar. Things go from bad to worse as Omar's cohorts blow up Jack's boat, with, thankfully, no one aboard. In desert country and being chased by bad dudes, Jack and Ralph decide to use a plane as a getaway vehicle and jet off, on the ground, across the Sahara. What fun! Can they rescue Joan and grab a treasure, too? This film doesn't have the charm of the first film, Romancing the Stone, as few sequels do. Nevertheless, it is cute, clever and funny, at times. The three stars, Turner, Douglas, and DeVito are a dynamite threesome while the unknown secondary cast is just fine. Yes, the scenery is lovely and does Turner and Douglas look young and attractive in their well-chosen costumes. With few offerings from Hollywood these days, in the romantic comedy genre, one has to "go back to the future" to find treasures, indeed.

leplatypus Watch this movie as a precious relic of a time of freedom as you can see things that would be totally censored in today American movies! In a way, this movie is really close to early Tintin comics as it's pure fun in exotic places and for sure fun means native depicted as Clichés! So here Arabs and Africans are viewed as primitive, a bunch of tribes or peasants, Muslim rebels fighters are helpful and wise! It's hard to judge it against the Zemeckis movie because the setting is totally different: the first was jungle, green, water while now it's desert, sand, sun! I find that the trio has a real chemistry together, there is really some funny moments and if the movie drags a bit at the end, i had a pleasant watching!

jackasstrange Jewel of the Nile is the poor made sequel of the somewhat acclaimed 'Romancing the Stone' . And what i mean by poorly made is 'very poorly made' . The script is laughable. Way too bad. It's filled with poor dialogs, and unfunny racist jokes towards the people from Africa. It has also totally nonsense and cliché moments, composing perhaps one of the worst screenplays that i've ever saw. I'm not exaggerating, and if you think so, just go watch the film by yourself and you'll see what i'm talking about. A quick example would be the unfunny jokes by DeVito. The acting is horrible. The actors really seems to not care at all about the film. And rightfully so. And the soundtrack. Come on. That's one of the reasons of why the 80s are so lame. The music is horrible in this film, the typical annoying 80s pop beats as a soundtrack really wasn't a good idea to put in it. The edition is equally poor. Shame.Avoid this film. It's too bad for the sake of being bad. 2.6/10

Dave Watching this, you get the feeling that half way through production, everyone decided that it just wasn't going to work, and best to wrap things up and put away dreams of an enduring franchise. It wouldn't shock me if somewhere down the line this turned out to be the real story of what happened. Not that it is horrible. It's one of those movies that's fun to watch on a cold winter night when there's nothing else to do. I like watching it usually sometime in December every year. And it's fun. But that's about it.The movie is basically formulaic, following the same gist of Romancing the Stone. But in each case, things are a little less where they should have been more, and more when they should have been less.While Romancing the Stone let the humor come from the story, the incidents, the characters, Jewel almost self-consciously feels the need to inject humor where it may or may not belong. While Romancing had fun encounters with people that never seemed entirely unrealistic, Jewel had a series of encounters where suspension of belief entered almost fantasy film levels. In Romancing, the scenery and the settings helped move the plot along. Here, they were usually just backdrops, the scenes could have been in the American West or in the Great Plains for all it mattered. There was a lack of attention to the little things.The actors, on the whole, were OK. In most cases, it was the support cast who maintained the drive. Both Turner and Douglas appeared, at times, to be biding their time, working through a project that they initially were excited about but eventually lost their enthusiasm.Movies usually are not filmed in order of the story. I would be interested to know if this was the exception. I would like to know this because, at least to me, it seems as if there are two movies: one set of scenes - in no particular order - where the mood, the film, the directing, the acting - are all of a higher quality, one that hearkens back to Romancing the Stone. The other, the directing, filming, acting, humor, dialogue - all seem sub-par. Even the final clip, that shows everyone coming together - no matter how illogical - seemed to be an afterthought, as if to say 'there, that's done! We're out of here and not coming back!' That is why I sometimes wonder if somewhere along the line something happened that took the wind out of everyone's sails, forcing them to just throw things together to make something coherent out of what they began. I dunno.In the end, Jewel of the Nile remains nothing more than mid-80s farcical romp, failing to be as good as its predecessor, and leaving the audience with the notion that it could have been better. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe from beginning to end, everyone threw their all into the movie. But if they did, it would take something other than the movie itself to prove the case.