leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (12/18/85)
THE JEWEL OF THE NILE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: ROMANCING THE STONE was the jewel. THE
JEWEL OF THE NILE lays there like a stone. The characters
are less interesting, the story is more mechanical, the humor
is bland. This are still some of the humor and zip of the
first film, but not enough.
These days it is a pretty safe bet that any film that shows a good
profit will have some sort of a sequel to trade off its popularity. The
acknowledged masters of the art of finding a way to make a sequel have been
Twentieth Century Fox. They earned the champion's crown when they blew up
the world in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES and still found a way to make
three more sequels. This same film company had a big hit in their
delightful ROMANCING THE STONE. The production of another Joan Wilder/Jack
Colton story was pretty much a foregone conclusion, even without the same
creative team.
Instead of the late Diane Thomas to write the script, they used the
team of Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Komner, who had worked together
previously on the script of REAL GENIUS. Instead of Robert Zemeckis as
director, they had Lewis Teague. Unfortunately, the combination of Thomas
and Zemeckis is sorely missed.
In THE JEWEL OF THE NILE, Wilder and Colton are enjoying their ill-
gotten gains of the first film, starting to get on each other's nerves, and
are on the point of breaking up when a rising Middle Eastern leader--with
Fascist tendencies--coerces Joan to come to his palace and write his
biography. Instead, she gets embroiled in an adventure (big surprise!)
involving a struggle for power between the fascist Omar (Omar Sharif look-
alike Spiros Focas) and a comical Arab holy man (Avner Eisenberg, fresh from
his one man Broadway show "Avner the Eccentric"). The holy man's disciples
are five juggling Arabs played by the comic juggling and acrobatic team "The
Flying Karamazov Brothers."
The real problem with the new script is that it fails to involve the
audience. When Joan Wilder and Jack Colton were strangers in danger, the
first film had the feel of a South American IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT. As rich,
bickering lovers, the couple loses much of their appeal. And caring as
little as we do for the petty lovers, the action is just action without
excitement. The wise man, who should be charismatic, is almost cute but is
mostly bland. He and his followers--played by American comedians--have no
credibility as Arabs. They are at best stereotypes and are rarely that
good.
The film does have some humor, though not as much as its predecessor.
Much of the comedy is provided by Danny DeVito, who seems to be in this film
only to add comic relief and continuity with ROMANCING THE STONE. But even
the comedy is scaled down from the previous film. On the -4 to +4 scale,
ROMANCING THE STONE got a +2 and THE JEWEL OF THE NILE gets a 0.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper