Blu-ray Movie Reviews

In the blockbuster "Romancing The Stone", novelist Joan Wilder and wanderer Jack Colton went sailing off into the sunset together. In this thrill-packed sequel, Ralph is back on their trail and they're back in the fast lane on a perilous trek through the fierce North African Desert. Not even treacherous tribes, deadly dungeons and seemingly endless villains can stop this trio from finding, once and for all, that mysterious "jewel".

While not quite the great adventure story that Romancing the Stone was, this was still better than most sequels and still a lot of fun. Production values got a bit higher and the chemistry was still there in spades. I was always hoping that more installments might find their way to theaters but I can live with these. If you have seen this one or the first, do yourself a favor and check them out.

I was really impressed with the first film’s HD transfer and this one is strong too, but not quite as solid overall. The print has a bit more wear to it, which hurts detail here and there. Darker sequences can be on the soft side but I’m glad to see that Fox isn’t scrubbing their titles and eliminating detail in the process. Depth of image is strong and there are no signs of compression artifacts making this a pretty solid catalog transfer.

The DTS-HD Master Audio mix is a bit more explosive than the first film and does a nice job with surround presence and overall atmosphere. Dialogue is very natural in balance and the imaging across the main soundstage is dead on. The sound design is a nice mix of 80’s style synth scoring and natural ambiance and doesn’t sound overly dated. While some of the action scenes sound a bit canned, I was impressed with the dynamics given the age. While I wouldn’t call this a reference quality soundtrack, it gets the job done.

Extras include a feature commentary with the director, some deleted scenes and some promo style features that look at the success of the film and the themes. The trailer is also included.

I’ve always enjoyed this series and it was great to see Fox release both of them on Blu-ray. The presentations were a lot better than I was expecting for the catalog favorites making them an easy recommendation.