San Diego Reader

The sweaty Western action, for openers, is not everyone's mental image of a "romance novel" -- more suitable, one might think, for Spicy Western ca. 1937. (The accompanying strains of Alfred Newman's How the West Was Won awaken a thirst for something other than a spoof -- not to be slaked here.) Nor is the pale, frail, Katherine Mansfield-ish writer everyone's idea of a "romance novelist" -- pen name of Joan Wilder. But she is just the person, or Kathleen Turner is just the actress, to be swept up in a Latin American adventure wilder than Wilder's wildest. Something, but not enough, and nothing at all complicated, is made of the relationship between the heroine's books and her "real-life" adventure. The popularity of these books in the macho market is one such thing, perhaps the best such thing: it gets her out of one jam, and doesn't get her out of another, and gets a laugh both times. With Michael Douglas and Danny De Vito; written by Diane Thomas; directed by Robert Zemeckis. 1984.

— Duncan Shepherd

• Rated PG

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